Echo JS 0.11.0

The answer to your points is simple. Some people just don't want to go away from expressjs. Express Happiness provides some tools, configuration options and other stuff that's missing from express because of its unopinionated nature. 
So that's the basic idea behind it. Keep using express but in a more structured / opinionated way.
And @davidchase, that's exaclty why is called "Express Happiness" :)