I know it is crazy to have to reinstall the entire OS because of a control panel removal.
What I would suggest is when the OS has been freshly installed, use rsnapshot to take a snapshot of all the important folders that would be modified by the control panel. I guess it should be possible to get this list from CWP support. Definitely /etc /usr /var...
Then install the control panel and if not happy, just copy the rsnapshot folders back and reboot. At least it will save the time to re install the entire OS and run all the updates again.
I hope this can help.