Thanks a lot for ellaborating in such detail.
As a kid, Empire was actually my least favorite film of the OT. Always disliked how it ended the way it did compared to ANH or ROJ (the protagonists just manage to escape... and that's it), and found the later third pretty boring. Battle of Hoth is such a banger of an action scene, and it's never topped for the remaineder of the movie. Now, as I aged up I appreciated the emotional beats in the rest of the movie much more and it is now my favorite Star Wars thing among all Star Wars things.
Personally I feel that Leia is portrayed quite well in her Hoth scenes. She leads the evacuation effort and is shown as being one of the last to leave, etc... Always felt she gives a very good impression of an heroic military commander, putting others before her, etc...
She's given not much during the subsequent escape though - on that I'll agree. But then again Ford and Fisher have such dizzying chemistry, "I love you/I know" is one of my favorite dialogue exhcanges in movie history.