The property on a "list" area "maxComponents" is relative new.
Meaning it was introduces long time after the types of areas (list & single).

Also I have in mind that formerly, when introducing the new templating/rendering with 4.5, the single area created a different content structure (no area node was created). This is not the case anymore since also quite a while.

I checked the created content structure and the ui behavior of the two situations.
I was not able to see any difference.

That lead to this ticket:
We should investigate if there is still a "real" difference between the two configs.
Of not, the 'single" area might get deprecated.