This is pretty good, if a bit long in the beginning. I suggest that you are missing an important, obvious bit (don't feel bad, it's ignored everywhere). As things form (cells or not), they remain in existence when the form they take is useful to their own future. In evolution, the future of the environment is also part of the scheme. That Future Usefulness has to be more than just 'sustainable': it has to have a net positive ratio between its future usefulness and the resources consumed. This Net Future Usefulness is the amount a thing contributes to its own future (or its environment and offspring) that overcomes random, unpredictable, unpatterned risk (Black Swan, so to speak). Nassim Taleb hints at it with the term "anti-fragility".

When you think about it, it's obvious. When you focus on it in your models, you might find answers you didn't know you were even looking for.

Call it what you will, "self-regeneration", "positive feedback", "anti-fragility", etc: nothing exists without being useful to itself in its future.

For most animals alive today, the "net" component of their existence was enough to survive the Chicxulub impact by having stored DNA or adaptability to shrink resource use at least temporarily.

In physics, the quantum realm of emergent particles would be uneventful without the occasionally net useful emergence of structure/geometry/synergy.

Over infinite time and random space, everything that is useful probably emerges, even if we don't see it. Nature doesn't always take the shortest path or the simplest path: it takes the net useful path.