In my experience, often these kind of recommendations make a lot of sense for running a university group in US/UK universities, but perhaps less so in mainland Europe. Or more precisely, in universities with a large natural pool of potential interest in EA, vs universities where fewer people have heard of EA or where there is a much weaker culture of having university groups in the first place, etc.
Having done around five years of university group organizing at various levels of engagement, I am not sure how impactful it was, but it was certainly more often than not a slug and unrewarding. This was mostly because group sizes were so small that meetings often felt awkward and not fun, and consequently advertising and preparing talks did not feel like a good use of time. Things might have changed since two or three years ago, but I cannot confirm that the existing resources and knowledge from orgs like CEA or in various fora helped us in a substantial way.
Great post, thank you so much for putting it out!
Adding as another option: Splitting your time between an EA hub and your home base. This obviously depends a lot on your comfort with travel, distances involved and costs but if you can make it work it can be great. This can look like working during the week in the EA hub and spending the weekend at home, when most social stuff is happening anyway. Or traveling for a week every month or so to co-work with people can also give you lots of benefits if you are strategic about it.
For me moving completely to an EA hub was never really an option because of various social ties, so I am grateful to have found people that showed flexibility around working arrangements.