On a MAXScript side, having the same freedom with edit poly as editable poly would make it much easier to create mutlipurpose tools. Right now, creating a tool that works both for editable poly and edit poly means creating two tools as each uses slightly different methods and naming, which also means that most of the tools don't support edit poly modifier at all. To add to that, most of the edit poly methods cannot be used when modify panel and subobject level is not active, and more often than not, the subobject elements have to be selected.
As a prototype of the unified methods, I've made a maxscript wrapper around the edit poly methods that uses the same method naming and signatures as te polyop methods. However, the limitations mentioned above still apply any many functions are missing as they're not exposed in edit poly modifier.