It's more than enough to make them different.
The reasoning behind her being unstable doesn't make her the same as yellow jacket, it makes her more sympathetic and less boring since she never went as far as he did especially when her own life was on the line. She may have considered it but thinking about it doing something bad makes you the same as someone as YJ who we all know wouldn't have listened to Goliath for shyt and went to kill Cassie like he was gonna do in the first movie.
Even if time did fly by he wasn't an official Avenger so he couldn't have gone to NY and helped. He'd just end up bring a criminal again and this time with a 20 years minimum on the Raft. That's why the route they went with was better because at least he's gonna be helping in a time where the world has no choice but to seek help from characters like him.