Hi @mickee ,
You've already received a reply here from @gordon , an Ubuntu MATE team member and, in my humble opinion, an incredible contributor to these "Ubuntu MATE Community" Discussion forums.
I haven't installed Ubuntu MATE 22.04 myself yet (I'm still on Ubuntu Mate 20.04.4), but I'll say a few things, even so:
1 - You've asked: "Wonder why they removed these [ the "Software Boutique" and "Welcome" ] as part of the new UM install? "
Well, in the "Ubuntu MATE 22.04 LTS Release Notes | Ubuntu MATE", we can find the following related information :
" (...)
Ubuntu MATE Welcome & BoutiqueThe Software Boutique has been restocked with software for 22.04 and Firefox
ESR (
.deb) has been added to the Browser Ballot in Ubuntu MATE Welcome.
(...)"
So, according to that information, the "Ubuntu MATE Welcome & Boutique" are still a part of Ubuntu MATE 22.04
2 - Having said that, I've found the following related topic here in the Ubuntu MATE Community, started on April of the current year (2022) by @randomdave and that currently (20th August 2022) has 26 posts in that topic (the last one posted on 23rd June 2022):
Near the end of that topic, @tmt says that he has reported a Bug in Launchpad:
The bug he has reported in Launchpad is the following one:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate/+bug/1979362
You may want to click on the "This bug affects 5 people. Does this bug affect you?" link in that web page (to add yourself to the list of affected users by that bug) and you may also want to add a comment in that page to report your experience about this bug.
I've also found the following "Issue" in the "ubuntu-mate-welcome" git repository in "GitHub" that may also be related:
I hope this information is useful, in some way.