We use panels throughout the UI to organize settings. Remember that geometry and shader nodes are also editable from the properties editor, where we already use panels, and so they would fit in naturally.
If the proposal is to be inconsistent with that, there should be an argument for why it’s significantly better. And it should ideally then also explain how the problem of complex node groups will be solved, if the same method can be applied to that or if it would require us to implement and maintain two systems for organizing node inputs.