A few comments:
–College admissions officers do pay attention to senior year course rigor. They will certainly understand that an “A” in APES is not the same as an A in AP Physics C etc.
–Your S should want to prepare himself as best he can for college. If he wants engineering I’d take Calc BC and AP Physics.
–If he typically does enough to get by how do you know he will excel at the “easier” AP courses – he may do enough just to get by in those as well.
–Admissions are determined before senior year GPA comes out.