I wonder why you hold that most who’re interested in LACs are unlikely candidates for honors programs? All I have is anecdotal experience, but my D, amongst many high achieving students in our area who wound up at highly selective LACs, applied to and was admitted to UW honors (and UO honors). In fact, pretty much every kid we know who wound up at an elite college of any size applied to UW HC, and that includes a lot of LACs.
I won’t pretend to know what all the many honors colleges around the country are attempting to do or not do, but the honors colleges at the University of Washington and Oregon (I believe UofO’s is the first such college) do convey as advantages to their programs some of the primary advantages that proponents of LACs tend to tout. Here’s what the UW HC has to say:
Interestingly, when you decline the UW Honors college, they ask the student to voluntarily complete a questionnaire explaining why they didn’t join. I’ll spare you the details, but this led to a conversation with a former colleague of mine who is on the faculty at UW (though admittedly not a UW HC admin). His take on the college is that they are, at least in part, seeking to attract accomplished kids who might otherwise score UW’s undergraduate size to be less than appealing and who prefer the benefits conferred by smaller private colleges. I doubt the internal conversation is limited to competing for students who might otherwise go to Dartmouth. They’re also very interested in a kid who would otherwise choose Whitman College.