If not, then Not Working is exactly right.. the ZWave spec insists that Barrier devices do absolutely nothing if not securely joined.
I just moved two of my Yale locks to a new'ish hub and I had to bring them into the same room. After that I moved them back to the Doors and did a ZWave Repair.
I Excluded them from my first Hub and I did verify that they would join back again, 'in-place' Yet with my new'ish hub, the mesh is a lot more sparse with Repeaters. Normally we say "Join in-place" but sometimes breaking the rule saves time/$.
My experience is that... for my Yale Locks, in-place CAN work.
I had the locks on my original hub for years and then I got a 4th hub for Production and the physical area of the house I wanted to move to the new hub included the two locks. I Excluded the two locks easily, in place, from the old Hub (a C-3).
Including it to the new hub reminded me of the original include back in 2018. The locks would say "complete" but the hub would see nothing... or the locks would timeout. When I pulled the locks from the door and moved them closer to the new hub, Include was fast and fully functional. Putting the locks back on the doors and a ZWave Repair got them working. I thought my new mesh for the new hub was adequate. But maybe not. So I then Excluded the Locks and Included them back to the original hub, in-place, and it worked. To get it back onto the new hub meant removing the locks from the doors and bringing them to the new hub, returning them to the doors and doing another ZWave repair. Ultimately this effort led me to ordering an Aeon Repeater7.. arriving next week.
As I said at the beginning, these particular locks CAN Include in-place. I think I will always make that my first try.. knowing very well that easily remove them and take them to the hub. (Easy because all the tools are already in a pile next to the locks anyway. )
Sure, I would personally try to, but as you pointed out, if it hasn't securely joined, then the user is confused and very typically blames the hub first.
A long ethernet cable is the next tool I'd reach for instead of pulling the lock. I don't know why some locks seem to be weaker than others. My YRD256 Z-Wave Plus is about 10 feet from the hub and it's always worked fine.
Probably best to tell new (e.g. Green) users to just join close to the hub. Always. Just my 5 cents CAD (pennies are out of circulation here ).