OP talks as if it’s a trivially easy cheap cop out to make audience cry and feel good about it enough to go home happy. Dude, if a movie makes me happy cry I don’t give a rats ass what trick they used. They succeeded.
And it’s not like there isn’t a shitload of movies that try to make you cry and fail miserably, so I don't think there's a cheap trick.
I went through a phase like that after discovering the TV Tropes wiki and saw all the patterns of my beloved childhood media laid bare. Then I made peace with it, and started enjoying the craft of casually hiding a Chekov’s gun in plain sight, etc.
On the other hand, no problem for triggering laughs. It's actually the reverse: you need good direction and good editing (because rhythm matters a lot) to make a joke impactful.
I've never really understood that. Is it shameful to be emotionally affected by a movie, even if you don't really like all of it?
I've seen that a lot about Spielberg movies, and more recently with J.A. Bayona (in particular with The Impossible and A Monster calls).