Most of us simply
know that life is different from dead matter. That's a profound certitude. You may call it "philosophical mumbo-jumbo", but it wouldn't occur to most of us that we have to "measure" experience, and the questions you're raising are certainly considered interesting by some more nerdlike people, but would be rejected as scientist sophistry¹ that strays away from common sense by most others (provided they had these concepts handy in their vocabulary).
Insects like bees are usually not considered spirited or soulful. That is because they are too dissimilar from humans. It is intuitive understanding, predating any modern science. Bees, like ants, indeed live and function as collectives.
No automaton will ever be life, whatever von Neumann thought experiments are applied to it. It will always remain dead matter.
Metabolism is the material base for life, but we find (have laws regulating) that people in a coma with unrecoverable brain damage being held alive by medical care and machinery stop experiencing and hence can be switched off and allowed to die. So metabolism, while necessary, is not sufficient.
I cannot follow you in ascribing life-like properties to an LLM. I'm not passionate either about this topic. The LLM, to me, is a tool and that's it. Not sure what you mean by the last sentence (but perhaps not important).
[1] Plato wrote some mumbo-jumbo about it a long time ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist_(dialogue)