As far as I know, for all intensive purposes the SmartThings Link for NVIDIA Shield works exactly the same as the stand-alone hub, which is awesome because I snagged it for $10 + $4.50 shipping direct from Samsung using a promotional coupon code. Anyhow, I see that webCoRE is a much geekier and local-network-based (ie., faster!) IFTTT type of affair, so I will definitely install it and check it out.
I figured out that my RGBW WiFi controller is an ARILUX, so I’ll be attempting a firmware flash of its esp8266 chip and installing erocm1231’s custom service manager and device handler to gain direct SmartThings control as described in this thread. So that fixes one out of two of the non-hub-based devices I’m using.
Either way I can see how your trick of setting up “null” devices (as I’ve decided to call them) here could be very useful as an intermediary IFTTT trigger as part of a webCoRE piston which accomplishes a much more complex set of actions than a single IFTTT applet can. Something I look forward to playing with, anyhow.
Thanks again!