I agree with your main point but I wouldn't say executive orders lack binding legal force. They derive binding legal force from congress or the constitution first telling the executive branch "you go figure out the details here."

Foreign policy.

The SEC.

Heck, the emancipation proclamation was an executive order. Everyone knew Lincoln and his contemporaries wanted to abolish slavery, but Lincoln was absurdly careful at the time to frame the proclamation as a wartime measure aimed at crippling the south's economy. He went out of his way to appeal to existing commander-in-chief powers in order to make it lawful.