Thomas,
Your scenarios are exactly why I argue that more benign bunkers increase strategy. If there is zero chance of recovering from a strategically placed bunker, it effectively limits the options to playing as far away as possible. Even in a "perfect" bunker of some depth, you have a chance of being up against the lip, etc., reducing the chances of recovery to 90-80-70%, depending.
With any normal fairway bunker of 2-4 foot depth, even with perfect sand, there is a chance of not getting to the green in regulation. To me, the trick is to make the depth of that bunker such that even from the typical location, you can just clear the lip with the club you might use, creating something close to a 2/3-1/3 ratio of probable success. What thinking golfer would challenge a bunker if the probability of recovery success was much less than that, other than in some do or die situation, such as on the last two holes of an important match where they had to take unreasonable chances to catch up?
Of course, that is an inexact science, but as noted in the proportionality thread, it doesn't matter over 18 holes if some bunkers are easier, others are harder, and the golfer figures all that into his strategy. You can get a headache trying to overthink these kinds of issues, because no matter how hard we try to eliminate the rub of the green, it will still exist.
(I am not imagining a perfectly flat bunker of perfect sand in your scenario number one, nor do many of those exist on professionally designed courses)