Hi Dale,
For our Kinetis L devices, they heavily reply on PE for baremetal and MQX Lite functionality.
The Kinetis K devices have used PE for clock configuration and quickly adding in drivers for on-chip peripherals. PE can also help when it comes to porting as the processor component can be changed out and/or helpful for changing packages.
The divide line is user specific. Some people like using PE much and other prefer using the MQX drivers and adding their own code. So no right or wrong answer.
Later this year Freescale will offer having the MQX Lite on the Kinetis K devices via PE and the PE will have some nice enhancements.
Regards,
David