A couple definitions, since I'm still a little confused by your questions.
- Scene - a "look" involving one or multiple devices, they are triggered with the buttons towards the top of home app, by asking siri using the name.
- Automation - happens automatically, "if motion sensor activates, turn on light" or "at sunrise, turn off outside lights", they can also play scenes instead of individual lights.
Those 6 buttons under the dimmer, where you set the color??
Those have been there for quite a while, I think they showed up in iOS 13, previously there was a single button labeled "color" which took you to another page, but the same color preset buttons were there, just in a different layout.
If you didn't have those, something didn't work properly during your install. which might have affected the scenes you recorded.
If you look at my post above, it's 100% possible to record a scene and not have all the parameters have been recorded, so it could include level, but not color.
I'm not sure why it does this occasionally, but you can check the contents of all scenes in the eve app.
You can also add/remove parameters to that scene in the eve app.
The eve app even has pages that are broken down by parameter type, so there is a single page that shows all the color parameters for all the lights in your house, and you can drag a color you've made from one lamp to all the others.
you can also edit scenes, by dragging and dropping color from one lamp to another.
You say you want to keep all your stuff in one place.
Don't think of the eve app as a different place, think of it as a different view of the same place.
The eve app runs beside the home app and updates the same backend, it's a second front end for the home app that has more features.
It doesn't replace the home app, you can still use both apps, or just one if you like it better.
anything created or changed in one is automatically in the other.
it works for all homekit devices, not just the ones from eve
I'm a big fan of setting the look for a scene in the hue app, as it's easy to set entire rooms to the same color. And it's also much faster when adjusting large chunks of lights.
Once you get the look in the room how you like it using hue, you then go into the home app, and create a scene. When you add lights to that scene, the home app automatically pulls their current state into the scene. then all you have to do is save the scene instead of messing with going in and out of multiple tiles to get things set.
it's also easier to match colors from one light to another.
Using this method, you can copy the scenes from the hue app into the home app in probably a minute per scene.
You can't change the color on a hue bulb unless it's actually outputting light.
so if you're trying to change color temperature when the lights aren't on, it won't work.
I've written a couple small scripts that interact directly with the hue hub, if the bulb is off it will reject a color command.