Late to this, but the synthapella idea is a nice one and a couple of technical points are worth checking when you strip the drums out:
1. Sidechain. If the pads, chords and atmosphere are ducked from the kick, they'll still pump with the kick muted, or stop pumping altogether if the trigger is the kick channel itself. For the synthapella, decide which one you want. If the movement should stay, feed the sidechain from a muted ghost kick track. If it should be smooth and ambient, bypass the ducking for that export.
2. Low end. With the bass gone the track can feel thin in the low mids. A gentle low shelf on the pad bus, or letting a low pad note sustain under the chords, fills the space the bassline used to take.
3. Reverb and delay tails. Tails that were masked by the drums become very exposed. It's worth listening again to the decay times and the high end of the reverb returns, and maybe shortening or darkening them a little.
4. Mastering. A synthapella has far fewer transients, so the same limiter settings as the full version will often squash it more than you expect. Master it as its own track: aim for a lower loudness, back off the limiter until it's barely touching, and let it breathe. It suits the ambient approach better anyway.
On your point about smashing the dynamics on the full version: try setting the limiter so it only catches 1 to 2 dB on the loudest hits, and get the rest of the loudness from a gentle bus compressor or a little saturation earlier in the chain. You keep more of the mids and the life that way.
