Kay was made Apple fellow so he could be lured to work for Apple from where ever he was then working (General Magic or Xerox), can't really remember.-- I think folklore has something on this as well.

Atkinson was given fellowship because Jobs wanted to make him happy. [1]

The way I see it, Apple gives fellowship to people to make them feel themselves important and keep everyone in the room happy and when the press put's their name next to other giants,that must be massive ego satisfaction -- in a positive sense(it was apparently Schiller's idea to use click wheel for original iPod.[2]), for the lack of better choice of words on top of my mouth right now.

1.https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

2.Valley of Genius