I bet it’s possible to have the preview pane give you a preview according to the template you need.
I’ve just discovered that I can get such an effect within dynamic tables (which can toggle their expanded rows into edit mode). See this thread: Hacking tbl-expand (with templates) in shiraz dynamic tables - #7 by Springer
I suspect part of the explanation has to do with how the preview pane works for “draft of” tiddlers, if/when you haven’t specified a different Edit template (via the cascade for edit mode)
There are various plugins that offer editing interfaces that edit without setting up a “draft of” tiddler, and these may help you (or anyone working regularly with templates other than the default one) to see a live preview of your edits in progress as they would appear in their “final” form.
(Then again, if you’re looking for a completely non-wikified mode, is the preview pane doing anything useful for you at all? Wouldn’t you just toggle that preview pane off for these tiddlers?)