I think there's a lot of variability here.

I've met Principal Engineers at Amazon who never write a line of code and barely do any mentoring (I don't like those PEs).

But I've also worked with Senior and Principal Engineers who do incredible work, mentor, truly lead. They are force multipliers, making adjustments to the course of the organization in ways that have huge benefits and gains. And if you dropped these people into a new challenge with a totally different stack and business, they'd do the same thing there too.

I hope to someday be one of those people.