I wonder if there really needs to be a difference between approach to coding standards and such for administrator and frontend.
You bring up a great point and I largely agree with you that there is/should be little different in the UI options for the frontend and admin.
The JUI will be the same for both, so you can use identical UI options in both frontend and admin.
The main differences will be a) the template and how it styles the UI, and b) the UI usage: tablature data is more present in the admin (but can also be present for frontend administration), and Blog/News layouts are more common in the frontend.
Many Joomla components that are more like Apps will definitely use many of the more GUI elements in the frontend like Kunena, Projectfork and the User/Profile areas of Jomsocial, Community Builder, RedShop
