Extend cedta for more lapply() usages

[MichaelChirico]

Closes #2982

Split off from #7162 to isolate the refactor & bug-fix changes

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 98.51%. Comparing base (2f0d12f) to head (ec65a53).
Report is 1 commits behind head on master.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master    #7166   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   98.50%   98.51%           
=======================================
  Files          81       81           
  Lines       15032    15041    +9     
=======================================
+ Hits        14808    14817    +9     
  Misses        224      224           

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[github-actions]

• HEAD=cedta-sd-only stopped early for fread disk overhead improved in #6925
• HEAD=cedta-sd-only slower P<0.001 for memrecycle regression fixed in #5463
  

Generated via commit ec65a53

Download link for the artifact containing the test results: ↓ atime-results.zip

Task	Duration
R setup and installing dependencies	5 minutes and 3 seconds
Installing different package versions	10 minutes and 8 seconds
Running and plotting the test cases	2 minutes and 35 seconds