1. Most S905X boxes follow the reference boards quite closely and all use internal PHY ethernet so it's hard (but not impossible) to get a non-booting box, but that assumes you can trick the box into booting LE (some require non-standard boot tricks) and things can go wrong with cheap emmc/ram parts. You might not get WiFi/BT if non-Broadcom parts are being used.
2. Once you initiate recovery boot to load LE the u-boot environment is tweaked to use LE boot files (else it won't boot). If you remove the SD card (or USB) and force recovery boot again it should rediscover the AE install. You can't swap between distros solely by removing the SD card.
3. AE contains embedded tools whose primary/sole purpose is the consumption of pirated content. That's the main objection. AE's creator also leeches 99% of their distro from others without preserving attribution and licensing (so it appears to be their meisterwerk, when in fact it's the work of others). In FOSS circles that's disrespectful, but kind of normal/expected in the pirate box space.