Yeah, the difference is 10-13 F. IMO it's on the edge of being uncomfortable, and it's not super easy to do (like, how often do you run Cinebench with the computer on your lap), but if it's a concern then yeah, there's a significant difference.
I'm not used to measuring computer temperatures in F, so that doesn't mean much to me (I only use it for outside temperatures pretty much). My concern would be thermal throttling as I have seen on many ThinkPads rather than it becoming a bit uncomfortable. I'll probably use my future MBP mostly stationary at a desk with the lid closed.
I am semi-regularly dealing with temperatures in the 80-90s in celcius with my ThinkPad T440p in a docking station.
From a glance at your links it looks like they didn't get anywhere near that in their testing, so I probably have nothing to worry about, but I guess when the M2 Max comes out I'll give some thought to getting the bigger model, even though I don't tend to like overly large things. With ThinkPads I would absolutely not want a numpad (often on 15" models but not 14"), but it looks like Apple doesn't put those on any laptops anyway.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-14-2021-Lapt...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2021-M1-M...