Disney is wildly inconsistent with the A/V quality of some of their titles. The Jungle Book is another one that comes to mind. If ever you can, listen to the 1990 Dolby Stereo soundtrack; it’s noticeably more enveloping and consistently separated than the 2007 Platinum Edition mix, despite the latter being presented in discrete surround. Sound effects pan more frequently in the Dolby Stereo mix, and while the underscore for almost every song is mixed in broad mono that sounds flat as a pancake in the Platinum Edition (”Trust in Me,” “My Own Home,” and the closing “Bare Necessities” reprise being the only exceptions), you can hear separate music stems at play in the Dolby Stereo mix. The differences between 1990 and 2007 “I Wanna Be Like You” in particular are like night and day. (I’ll probably post the A/B comparison videos here soon.) So, yeah, there’s trade offs between both options— few scenes have broad mono score while most are in true stereo, and it isn’t always the same scene in both mixes.
I’ll take your word for it regarding The Jungle Book, but I personally thought that film’s discrete surround remix fared much better than that for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Compare how the music playing over the opening credits (and a few other scenes) sound(s) on the 1996 releases with how they sound on the 2002-onward releases…it’s even more night and day than the differences between the matrix surround and discrete surround versions of “I Wanna Be Like You”.