I've been using LW for years, so I believe I fully understand your point. I always subpatch my organic models in LW, but a subpatched quad gets smoothed, it doesn't get more detail just from subpatching.

A lot also depends on your work flow. If you do everything in LW life is simplified at the expense of a somewhat limited toolset. If you include other apps (like Maya or ZBrush for brush based sculpting tools for example) then you want a suitably detailed polygon mesh that supports transfer of the detail between apps. Then you can smooth it at render time via subpatching.