You should release cocos2d-x-lite as v4.0 quickly. It will stop all the worries about the standalone engine dying a slow death or not getting attention, and let all existing projects ‘fit’ in the new vision.
Once everyone has a clear path to migrate their existing code to new engine without doing a full rewrite, it will be easier for them to use the Creator editor for new pieces or migrate old screens/features one at a time. Asking for a full rewrite gives everyone the option to rewrite using any other framework.