Certainly I don’t normally use those presets, although they can be interesting. As you say, they are mainly Smart Lighting and a couple of other small tweaks, and are not necessarily what I would want as an end result.
Here is the result of the “Artistic HDR” preset
… and here are the corrections that have been applied
In my opinion, this is nowhere near where I would want to end up with an image, but it does demonstrate the kind of corrections that contribute to a certain overall look and feel.
I think it is important to say that, unless you have created your own custom presets, they should only ever be regarded a starting point, which you are free to tweak to your hearts content.
If you want to know what a certain preset actually does, all you need to do is apply it to a “virgin” image and then select the “Active corrections” switch at the top of the right palettes (in PL4 at least). Then you will only see what that preset has done in terms of corrections.
A “full preset” is only a collection of corrections, applied at one time. You are free to alter any of those corrections or add more as you wish.
You can also create “partial presets”, which only affects certain corrections and you can apply those in much the same way as doing a list of corrections after the fact without changing everything from scratch.
Of course, if your partial preset touches a correction that you have already done, then that particular correction will be overwritten.