(ii) Does Apple solder certain components primarily because it makes repair more difficult?
Even if the answer to (i) is yes, the answer to (ii) can be no.
Most unpluggable components in most laptops are never intentionally unplugged over the lifetime of the device. Connectors take up space, can come unplugged accidentally, and degrade signal quality. Those are the reasons for soldering components in a modern laptop.
I would argue that they aren't anti right-to-repair. They are against poor quality repairs.
The issue is if you let individuals and 3rd party stores do repairs, there is no way to validate that they are doing it in a reliable/quality fashion. This is especially problematic when phones are getting more and more resilient to various environments (Like the addition of IP68)
When a customer has a repair done poorly and issues come up, they come to Apple for support.
Rossmann went on a drunken, paranoid rant about how the macbook webcam has secret hardware to spy on him. He took the video down after widespread ridicule.
There is a youtuber named Louis Rossman(1.7 million followers) fighting Apple on this since more than a decade.
Here is his channel: https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup