Yeah, it could be nice to have a dedicated, flexible transclusion plugin that fully implements these features.
What I do like about note editing, is that it's future-proof and cross-platform.
There is a 3rd way to kind-of-transclude that I didn't mention earlier, via the Note Link System plugin. The plugin can display previews of outgoing links from the note within the Markdown viewer, and in the case of internal links - even to specific sections in notes - the pop-up shows the content of the relevant section. Since every link creates an automatic backlink (via the NLS plugin, or other supported plugins), you get also that feature.
I don't use the view panel often, so it's not highly relevant for me, but it's an added bonus to using the plugin. Every link has its "transclusion".