I'm really not comfortable with subdividing the prog genre. "Prog-lite" to me seems to be just an excuse to shoehorn in many bands who have little or no relevance to prog into the genre. I mean, many artistes have at one time or another had a longish, epic song with a few changes along the way, but is for instance Springsteen's "Jungleland" or The Eagles' "Long road out of Eden" prog? You'd have to say no. So just having prog
leanings, especially only in a few songs, I would think would not qualify a band or artiste as prog.
As for APP, I would definitely consider them prog. They've had some great concept albums ("Tales of mystery and imagination"/"Eye in the sky"/"Turn of a friendly card"/"Eve") and their sound, though it does often tend more towards the pop side, has a lot of heavy prog elements. Even Parsons' solo material has this thread of prog running through it; take a listen to "Mr Time" from his debut solo, or "One day to fly" from "On air", and tell me they're not prog...
