Maybe OP means "application to a concrete example" to help the reader understand. If a paper is presenting a theorm, seeing it applied to an example could actually help.
Yup. I don't mean "here's how you can use my theorem to build a bridge", I mean "here's an instantiation used to prove a more tangible result". Bonus points if multiple such results fall out of the general theorem. That's good evidence to me that generality is actually accomplishing something.