Confirmed that this is finally fixed on Xbox 1.16.1. The turtles finally swam "home" and laid eggs! When bred in succession, sometimes they doodled around in circles in the water before returning to land, but they definitely had "go home" on the brain when pregnant.
Without correcting this oversight, there is no way at all to obtain the low-level ingredient coal/charcoal in the Nether if the game is set to Peaceful mode. It's also a bit extreme to expect people to hunt wither skeletons to obtain basic materials.