Nobody in this users forum knows, what PreSonus is intending to do. For that you better have a look at the press department of this website. You can also make a feature request in the answers department and see if somebody supports your suggestion.

The manual says it correct and for my personal use I have the recalling of all "pots" enabled. But there is nobody else working on the boards and I more or less always use the same settings. It is a totally different thing to have multiple users involved with no direct communication and a variety of experience and knowledge. There are quite some users around here from churches, so if you would start a new thread ("how to ... in a church"), I bet they will share their experiences and give you some good advice.

The problem you will run into with recalling "pots" is that you will NOT always get, what you see. You see the knobs and their value, but recalling a scene may bring up totally different settings ("overwriting" what the knobs show), so there suddenly might be problems with feedback and you don't know, where that comes from. That is why I recommend to leave the "pots" (and faders) to their physical settings. It is helpful for everybody working on the board, to SEE how all levels are adjusted. In my opinion this is the beauty of the SL boards. There is everything physically and optically "at hand"!

It may make sense to not use a computer, but an iPad would be helpful for visual control. You only need a router to make this work. Especially young people need to see graphical representations of functions. The fat channel is much better to "understand" in UC Surface than on the board itself. PreSonus offers an iPad stand which is meant to be fixed to two srewholes at the back of your SL.