This post is very well put, because I think it helps me put my finger on why I get irked when people play D&D without doing any combat. It's not that they're playing a system with a lot of tactical combat rules and not doing any tactical combat, it's that (at least some of the time) they're not engaging with that fact, they're not factoring the deliberate absence of that part of the system into their story. And that's not a fault of play -- if they're having fun, more power to them -- but for me, that's far more interesting.
A moment from one of my games I think about a lot was when I ran the ATARAXIA module for FIST, which has a section where the players are given this enormous statblock for the mech they need to engage with to complete their mission. For a rules-lite system with little to no combat rules, it's an intimidating thing to be handed: the mech has 8 different components with separate abilities and weaknesses, and almost 8 times as much health as the average player character. It's fair to say the mission expects you to have to tussle with this thing, even if you're not going to face it head on, because it's so easy to alert it and/or its guards. But my players came up with a plan, and rolled really well, and just... disabled the mech before it could take a single action. And it was awesome! They got to feel cool, they still had a dramatic scene trying to get out of there unscathed, and they got to show off their characters' strengths. But I think it worked so well because they got to see, mechanically, exactly how much this thing could shred them to pieces if they slipped up. They didn't "engage" directly with that part of the module (insofar as they didn't get into a fight), but it still informed how they played.
Inviting a system to your table only to ignore or sidestep various parts of it is a natural part of play. But it only becomes interesting for me when not engaging with those parts is a deliberate choice -- if it's up to me, and I'm not interested in exploring that absence, I'd rather just bring a system/setting to my table that doesn't put much focus on those ideas.