I think the answer (and I am not trying to be mean here) is that they literally don’t care anymore about making sure that things align to everything cannon or otherwise. We’re just going to make stuff.

BTW I am not Disney bashing here or denigrating the quality of what’s come out, I’m down with pretty much all of it as long as the initials JJA aren’t associated with it, just clear to me that worrying about, oh, a yellow lightsaber was only used in one sentence in a book from 1987 that that is now out of print, do you think we should do that? Those days are gone.