No, it doesn't say the client side "should" be automated. It says the client side "has to" be automated. That wording is mandatory, not optional. LE considers client-side automation a "must-have". Not "a good idea", not "would be nice to have": "we have to fully automate on the client side."
Indeed they don't, and in fact it's possible, both with their client and with third-party services. But that isn't their goal or their focus, and they don't seem inclined to expend any effort to simplify that process. It does not seem to me that the LE team could have made this any clearer or more explicit--statements like "automation is a key principle" and "we have to fully automate on the client side" seem pretty explicit and unambiguous that their interest is in supporting automated issuance, and only in supporting automated issuance. But you're familiar with these statements, and you clearly don't interpret them in the same way. So I have to ask: how do you interpret them? More specifically, how do you interpret them in a way that makes you think they are interested in making manual issuance and renewal easier?
As to your other concerns, they remain off-topic in a thread about certificate lifetimes, as they were when you mentioned them last week.