If you look how often (even here) people complain that the origins of the resistance and the first order aren’t explained sufficiently, you can imagine what people would be saying without these exposition scenes.
I don’t understand what you mean: not telling (or not explaining enough) it’s different from telling (through expositions) or not telling directly (through symbolism).
What I mean is that it is extremely difficult for filmmakers to anticipate how much exposition the audience wants. “Should we explain where the resistance comes from?” vs. “Should we make it more clear that the lightsaber called to Rey?” what is more important for the current movie? The backgrounds of the two sides can easily be explained in one of the next movies, the lightsaber scene not so much, so they decided to do it that way. Since it’s common practice to explain everything to the audience, I’m glad they at least managed to have one thing left misterious.