Yes, I can confirm that the light-sphere does not appear on replicated bulbs.

It seems that the replicator doesn't actually replicate the object, but a reference to the object.  I've noticed that replicated objects also don't render with an outline when using the Toon!Pro plug-in, and have concluded that it must be due to the fact that there's no actual geometry with the replicator.  (That makes sense from a system-resource-management perspective.)  The "Create" function even cautions you about the resource allocations necessary to create real instances of each object.

I haven't played around with particles enough to know the answer to your question about particles, but I'd guess it's a similar process "under the hood" of Carrara to produce particles and surface replications.

Hope that's helpful.

• Dex