Chris - genuine question. What was the criteria you were trying to meet when you carried out the change? There must have been an essentials and wish list for the new layout. If there was not, why is the site so different to before?
To me, the good things (layout, ease of access, opening at last read posts, etc) have all gone, and the missing bits (edit facility, loading photos, spell checker) are not addressed at all.
It is a disaster, and so far away from being what it should be that it is difficult to see how it can be brought to an easy to use site. It is painful to try and use, and this is with very low useage.
Criteria were polls did not work and the post editor has issues - support from Kunena was very difficult to get as it was self-serve - EasyDiscuss is a paid solution and hence support is baked in. Polls now work and the editor to my knowledge has no issues.
Post editing is still here - we missed a setting early on which we enabled very quickly.
You can upload photos still, so unless I'm missing something that standard users cannot see? I have this when I create a post or reply (though it's the Attachments tab at the bottom now).
Spell Checker - this is a browser thing you can add easily, I use Microsoft Editor which can be added to Chrome or Edge Chromium easily.