Ideally, we're all totally self-actualised boundaried people who can identify their needs and get them met. Nice in theory. We're not all there, though.
With a lot of people in AA who are new or newish or just generally disordered, the capacity to identify where one is going wrong and to identify what to do about it just isn't there. Others need to step in. Is it heavy-handed? Potentially. Is it intrusive? At times. But the alternative is to watch them blithely wandering into danger. Of course, this needs to be done with tact, consideration, discretion, and good judgement. But it does need to be done.
Sometimes AA is like a kindergarten, where all the rugrats are in the middle of the triangle, and sometimes they crawl over the boundaries of the triangle off to the side, where there are razor blades, nature red in tooth and claw, and other dangers. Some you can call to and they will crawl back. Others you have to pick up and put back in the middle of the triangle. As people grow up, intervention is required less and less, and people have to learn to manage their own affairs (obviously guided by the Higher Power and the programme), but this is a progression. There are no sudden steps.
So, I tend not to call sponsees who are many years sober but I will sometimes check in on newcomers who have disappeared. I do pull rank with people at early stages of recovery in terms of how to handle some practical situations, in terms of offering concrete suggestions. They're of course free to disregard the suggestions or tell me where to go, so it's not really pulling rank, because there's no actual authority. This approach is not the long-term ideal but the short-term expedient until someone is back on track.
I have been saved from myself endless times by timely intervention by the watchful waiters around me, even in recent months. This is how we look out for and after each other, and I will extend the same offer to others.