I may be the only person that feels this way, but I think that removing the scene between Leia and Wicket serves to enhance the movie in a couple of different ways. The first reason being that our hypothetical audience won’t know for certain what happened to Leia. Did she get captured by Stormtroopers? Will she be brought before Vader? The second being that the Ewoks seem much more threatening when they capture the other characters because we never saw Wicket being kind to Leia. It’s also a genuine surprise when it’s revealed Leia is staying with the Ewoks.