PLUS the extra weight of the machine and empty battery pack

In a lot of ways, there are parallels here to how 4WD on a motor vehicle has a tendency to get people into more pickles than out of one, due to human psychology. The go-to example would be snowy weather: the driver of a 4WD automobile can use their car to go deeper up an unplowed road, but then get stuck further from help. Meanwhile, a 2WD driver would have turned around earlier, and might just wait out the snowstorm with some hot cocoa by the alpine hotel's fireplace. The fact is that 4WD has an advantage by using all wheels to get the car moving, but has a negative advantage when stopping, since all cars have brakes on all wheels.

All good treks into nature need to be well-planned, and although I support the idea of getting more people out and about, I also agree that lowering the barrier to entry means some people will indeed bite off more than they can chew, when things start to go wrong. With any hope, they build an emergency beacon into these things.

I'd love to personally see if people that use ebikes only, have any stamina for actually biking or of it's made them lazy and weaker.

Not a direct answer to this scenario, but I recall seeing some early research that does indicate that riders of even throttle-only ebikes do exert modest effort, raising their baseline bodily parameters. If I had to guess, it may have to do with the activity of balancing a two-wheeler. Though some follow-up to that would be whether motorcycle riders have the same benefit, and whether the increased heart rate isn't due to something anciliary, such as the increased fear of being struck by a motor vehicle (specifically in the USA).