I think you're confusing LionChief PLUS with regular LionChief. The engines on the catalog pages you referenced are regular LionChief, and I think this is the first year LionChief locomotives have been cataloged for separate sale. The LionChief locomotives have previously only been included in train sets, and don't have all the added features of the LionChief PLUS engines. Although they do now have Bluetooth.
The LionChief PLUS locomotives are much more expensive as they have greater digital functionality, larger vertical motors, more metal and die-cast components in their construction, in addition to being able to run in conventional mode via a transformer without the remote, or with the remote.