I'd like to know why XML irules has to use EA?
You, me, and probably a bazillion others, but I digress. A long time ago (somewhere in v9 I believe) F5 experimented with a set of XML manipulation commands in iRules. The Early Access license was put in place as a sort of beta test option. Unfortunately the bulk of the XML commands died after the EA period and we were left with the single XML_CONTENT_BASED_ROUTING (XMLCBR) event and two commands. It's not the nirvana we all surely want, but it's still very useful. So no, only the XMLCBR event is available in 11.5. Everything else was deprecated.