There is stock (BOX_GetId) in .inc file to retrieve box's ID from ent id in forwards to avoid pushing strings. All native function which you listed would be just wrappers for fakemeta/engine function, so unefficient. For such task i can provide stock functions in fact.
My goal wasnt create easy interface for begginer developers, i focused on friendly interface for end user (admin). In my opinion if you can do something with box, you should know how to find them
Also this plugin will not provide models related stuff since i already made plugin for this before. If you need that i would release it here also, but i dont want combine them into one. My plan was to add scallable sprites helper.