With the changes made to AR, i.e. skills and working hours no longer being relevant, I assume the only value of a team in AR, shared or otherwise, is to assign work, sort issues and of course to measure team velocity - nothing more granular than that?
If this is the case, is there any point in populating the members of an AR team except as a reference to who is on the team?
Your assumption is correct adding members to a team is mostly used for reference. If you need to plan team capacity when people join, leave, or on holiday you can adjust the capacity in the sprint/iteration flyout. Details how to can be found here.
