tbh I don't know why non-members can be demanded at all. Even more so non-Christians. France, Poland, Ottomans, Ming have no reason to consider themselves subject to the HRE's "lawful" acquisition.
Unlawful territory demand can be accepted by AI now?
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Wait, so even if it sees they won't return? Seems kinda wasteful in terms of IA.
It is wasteful, but I doubt you could make the AI discriminate between when that is useful or not. If the scale is tipped the other way they would end up not using it at all.
Note that even alliance & good relations may not save you if you claim too much. I had 100+ and alliance with Austria as Brandenburg when I annexed all of Pommerania. They broke alliance due to -100 unlawful territory (not from demanding it, but the modifier to actually *get* an alliance with the Emp) and then hit me up with the actual demand. so beware! lesson learned
At least now they sometimes declare imperial liberation wars. Before they'd ask and just sit around.
Except they do not liberate - they make large, fairly low-AE (due to CB), landgrabs, which would've - and iirc did - ended with half of the imperial princes ganging up on the Emperor and making him spit all of his conquests out in real life.
I agree that it's a problem. I've talked about intra-HRE conquests by the Emperor as being problematic in the past. The biggest issue seems to be the lack of any meaningful penalty for going on conquering sprees for an AI Emperor, and especially for lucky nation Austria.
The other way to prevent vassals from returning provinces when demanded is to have them hating the emperor because they desire all of their(the emperor) provinces 
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I've seen nations risk life and limb, tore their entire economy apart, saddled themselves with loans and war exhaustion to finally get that one measly province... only to return it to the emperor a month later.
Of course, I have also seen streamlined wars where some minor blob swallow a rich opms, taking large AE hit... only to return it to the emperor a month later.
Man, why does the AI even bother fighting these kinds of war in the first place?
AI is notoriously bad. They start unwinable wars all the time (that's why I have 1 ally most of the time) and for some reason AI completely neglect Emperor and his allies when attacking HRE member from outside. Especially Venice is hopeless - let us attack OPM Mantua which doesn't have any ally. Bam, Austria is dragged into war with their huge alliance and Venice gets destroyed. I watched this scenario so many times.
Actually Austria vast majority of time lose Emperorship very fast because of it. AI Emperor indeed likes to conquer as much as possible but that always means Emperorship is lost.
Unlawful has always been a broken mechanic the player just does silly stuff to avoid. It makes it near-mandatory to either ally the Emp, become the Emp, or chain wars.
It's a contributing factor to Emperor Habsburg just eating the HRE from within, too, because they never get the provinces hit by it (they do take the slight prestige / legitimacy loss until its cored)
Just lower the effect (like, halve it) and apply it every time (unless the aggressor is not a member, then keep ONLY the opinion loss with HRE members) and remove the diplomatic action
It's a contributing factor to Emperor Habsburg just eating the HRE from within, too, because they never get the provinces hit by it (they do take the slight prestige / legitimacy loss until its cored)
Just lower the effect (like, halve it) and apply it every time (unless the aggressor is not a member, then keep ONLY the opinion loss with HRE members) and remove the diplomatic action
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I agree with the whole playing around to avoid the imperial territory modifier. I think the general purpose though, is to discourage people from expanding heavily within the HRE... and honestly, I think it worked... if you couldn't ally the emperor or chain them, you can't expand much or too fast within imperial territory. However, this does lead to the peculiar problem that you mentioned, where the Emperor is the only one that actually expands within the empire.
What also annoys me is that sometimes I actually TAKE BACK imperial provinces from non hre members and for one reason or another, imperial conquest event doesn't trigger, and emperor demands them back anyway.
I honestly think that unlawful territory should not be available while the emperor has a truce with the target. It's just BS to get hit with unlawful territory after taking provinces from the Habsblob.
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In my experience you need both Diplomatic and Influence if you want to fast expand inside HRE. I used it in my Bavaria (into Germany) Ironman game. Never faced any coalition and was pretty much greedy.
I think AI minors should just be less likely to go crazy in the HRE in general. Right now princes gobble each other up within decades. With the extended truces it's getting very hard for even a human Emperor to maintain law and order in the Empire in a sensible manner. In my HRE game, it's a recurring scenario where I smack down Tuscany to release Pisa and Lucca, only for the latter to eat Parma/Modena while the release truces were still in effect (I'm playing for RP flavour but still).
A strong and willing emperor ought to be able to come to the defence of member states, without having to navigate increasingly frustrating truce timers. And unlawful territory doesn't work well since it returns one province, while princes are easily taking several provinces in one go.
I think (or perhaps with certain level of reforms) the Emperor ought to be able to either guarantee member states for free, or Send Warnings that will trigger CtAs when any member state is attacked. After all, technically speaking all Princes "neighbour" imperial territory over which the Emperor reigns.
In contrast, successfully defying the emperor (i.e. winning a war) ought to prevent unlawful province demands. And the emperor should be defending member states, not expanding into them as AI Austria seems fond of doing.
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Okay before things get too far there's no need to attack brains. It's obvious they neglected to code in an exception for the Emperor; but it's not like they purposely designed a logic to work that way with the emperor. Let's keep things constructive.
The imperial liberation cb should only allow releasing nations, returning cores and canceling subjects. I mean, it's an imperial liberation, not an imperial annexation...
Most CBs allow you to do many more things than implied – the CB is just an excuse. The coalition CB is really the only restricted one, but that's due to balance concerns (a lot of allies). I don't see a similar reason for restricting imperial liberation.