I have no horse in this race and was actually generally agreeing with you, but it's not true that Avengers is the only thing Whedon ever made that was more successful than Snyder's DC movies. Age of Ultron was a hot mess, but it did way better business at the box office than either Man of Steel or Batman v Superman.
Again, I agree with your overall point and that it wasn't very good, but this specifically was a comparison that doesn't really hold up.
They're absolutely legacies. Being "distinguishable" from the original does not make them not legacies. Nobody is ever gonna mistake Jaime Reyes for Ted Kord or Kamala Khan for Carol Danvers, but they're still legacy heroes.
In fact, I'd say cases of legacy characters where the new guy is visually indistinguishable from the predecessor and has the exact same powers are rarer than the alternative. Even Ben Reilly, a literal clone of Peter Parker, had a new costume and upgraded web shooters.