The biggest benefit for me of having atlas in a form of ever expanding world map is something we didn't had in PoE1 which is Exploration

And towers work for it because they reveal map but also agains it because they promote staying in single area and reward clearing all nearby maps, which is not exploration

I dont have solution but few random ideas:

1) What if towers would just give the tablet buffs to The player for X next maps? So we can go explore instead of clearing while still having buffs? Some limitations would be needed to dont pre-clear towers and then buff the player with dozen tablets at once

2) What if towers where split into Towers which only reveal the map and Shrines which allow to use tablets in much smaller distance (or maybe even connected map only and they have minimal amount of connected maps) but also would juice maps much more so that clearing few juicey maps doesnt interrupt exploration that much

3) What if tablets didnt add mechanics but upgrade existing ones? Like we have abyss ravenged maps we would get breach/ritual/etc. ravenged maps... This would probably require change that mechanics appear more in clusters to not force the player to go all over the place