You are correct that Jordan overdid the "internal stream of thought" a little too much, at times. But the complete absence of such a thing is plan bad writing. The author has to give us some cues about character interaction, be it in the form of facial expression and physical gestures of the people involved, or their tone of voice. That is completely absent with Sanderson. Same with the internal thoughts of the PoV character. They serve a double purpose. They let us see how a character reacts to a conversation, but they're also absolutely essential to showing how the character changes in response to conversation. If Egwene's position vis a vis her trust of Elayne has changed due to Elayne dealing with the Kinswomen, we have to know. Because this is going to have serious repercussions down to the line, and if we see Egwene's thoughts here, her later actions will make more sense, and will not need an explanation either.

The problem is, Sanderson gives us the skeleton of the scene, but none of the actual flesh. Its like disembodied voices are occupying the scene, so much so that there are several instances where the character starts a dialogue in one place, and has then moved by the end of it with the reader clueless as to when this happened. For example, read the scene where Egwene reveals to the Rebel Hall that there are BA among them, and then Moria gets up to run away. What follows is a pathetic mess. Egwene is in all sorts of positions and places as if by magic, and the same with the Sitters.

Rectifying these issues actually doesn't take much space, and as DomA said, actually ends up saving the need for more scenes. Its not a matter of preference. These are basic rules for good creative writing.