Sure, I agree that there may be systems that have subjective experience but do not manifest that subjective experience in any way we recognize or understand.
Or, there may not.

In the absence of any suggestion of what might be evidence one way or the other, in the absence of any notion of what I would differentially expect to observe in one condition over the other, I don't see any value to asking the question. If it makes you feel better if I don't deny their existence, well, OK, I don't deny their existence, but I really can't see why anyone should care one way or the other.

In any case, I don't agree that the B's studying conscious experience fail to explore further questions. Quite the contrary, they've made some pretty impressive progress in the last five or six decades towards understanding just how the neurobiological substrate of conscious systems actually works. They simply don't explore the particular questions you're talking about here.

And it's not clear to me that the A's exploring those questions are accomplishing anything.

If the experience of qualia is a potential side-effect of physical objects, is it configuration-dependent or does everything have it in some raw, unprocessed form?

So, A asks "If containment is a potential side-effect of physical objects, is it configuration-dependent or does everything have it in some raw, unprocessed form?"
How would you reply to A?

My response is something like "We know that certain configurations of physical objects give rise to containment. Sure, it's not impossible that "unprocessed containment" exists in other systems, and we just haven't ever noticed it, but why are you even asking that question?"