To build LE without Kodi is not that difficult, basically "just" a change that a console is started instead of kodi, an setup utility need to get written to setup LE (this could be done manually too but nobody really want that) and a bash/python "addon" download tool.
A barebone server version was already done, with some manual effort it is easily doable even today.
There was an RPi3 version (very stripped down) without kodi for some special software that was around 20-30mb in total.