The difference is that the Aeon Minimote provides a way for the hub to remotely configure the operation of the buttons whereas the GE remotes only have a manual process to bind buttons to devices, and that process only accepts “slave” devices (non-controllers).
Yes if you had a Z-Wave traffic sniffer you could theoretically intercept the button presses, but that’s not very practical.
There is a way for Z-Wave devices called gateway controllers to add virtual devices to the network, but the hub doesn’t use that version of the library and SmartThings virtual devices don’t interact with the hub, they stay in the cloud.
Note that I haven’t spent much time on the GE remotes, so there might be some way of getting the buttons to associate to the hub that I didn’t find.