I think there's utility in structures/patterns that can self-heal when damaged, but my imagination initially goes to usage in games and unusual UI.

I've played with reaction-diffusion quite a bit, which is an adjacent idea, and there can be some fun in trying to delete all the solitons - which can be an interesting challenge when they behave like like rapidly-replicating gliders!: https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/F180/F180-k530.html.

My kids enjoyed that as a semi-game like challenge in an RD I made in Android app 'Shader-Editor' on phone, and I reckon something similar but using Neural-CA could be really fun!

Particularly if animated/dynamic (moving) patterns could be developed - like 'The Powder Toy' (et al) but less discrete and more continuous - and far less aliasing!

How about a Terraria-like crafting game, crossed with Powder Toy and using NeuralCA, Reaction-Diffusion and other continuous automata like fluid Sims too! Sounds like it could be fun!?

Information processing in organisms likely resembles NCA more than feedforward/backprop of neural networks.

well it attempts to explain how individual cells can combine to create complex creatures (like a lizard) AND how the creature can have features like healing, regeneration, etc.