YC1 and YC 2 are made up power levels the way the community tends to use them.
The only value of using these terms is to order characters based on how strong you think they are within one crew, but it means absolutely nothing for the gaps between them or comparisons with other crews.
So you are right in your post, they are not equal, that's not the implication of all of these panels or their bounties.
They are however both YC's with strength worthy of monsters with bounties over 1 Billion beri
and that is used for powerscaling in the manga by Marco after figthing them both to give that confirmation.
This statement at this point in time can only be made about Katakuri, Queen, King and Marco, so that's the company Oda gives Queen through this type of hype. Maybe he is the weakest of them all, but he can hang and get this type of hype, unlike other weaker YC's, who are used to make King and Queen look that much more impressive in comparison as was the case with Jack for their introduction.