What am I missing here?

Hi,

Apologies for the delay.

Yes, I agree that auto-updates is a part of WordPress functionality, but for some auto-update functionalities you will need to manually add some filters or constants in order to make auto-updates work as you prefer it to be. For example, if you wanted to only allow minor WP core updates, then you needed to set a filter named allow_minor_auto_core_updates that returned true value and allow_major_auto_core_updates filter that returned false value. Using EUM, you can simply achieve this goal by enabling the Auto-update all minor versions option (as shown below)

Also, for any updates that were taken place, whether they were manual update or auto-updates they would be recorded and you will be able to see update logs which then you can see what could be the problem if you got some failure updates.

Thanks
Anthon