Locking inside Clipping group not working?

Some preamble to explain what I'm trying to do: I've got a file that I make directions for people to do certain things in a blueprint. Think those football tactical boards with the arrows and stuff so communicate what the coach is thinking to the players; its a different setting but it's very similar. Each person is a different color, has a different icon, and has different things they need to interact with. Previously I had all these being embedded PNGs in a clipping group that had a stroke applied to it, this was so that selecting it and clicking on a swatch color would give a colored box around it to indicate who needs to pay attention to that object (ie. a red box around an icon meant that the person who's red is responsible for that).

The issue arose when I replaced all these PNGs with vector groups (this was due to Ai running a bit poorly with all them open). Now trying to change the a box color gives a stroke to literally every object. Now I get that that's desired functionality, so no complaints there. I thought this would be fixed by locking the icon group within the clipping group, but strangely that did literally nothing. It didn't stop it being moved as I was concerned, nor did it stop the strokes being applied to everything. The only thing I could get to happen was if I individually locked each object in the icon group and that only locked the position, not appearance oddly. 

I've attached a video were I go though the issue as well as what I'm trying to do.

So, specifically, could I get answers to these questions?

• Is there anyway (that isn't rasterizing the icon) to do what I'm doing with the PNGs but with these vectors?
• Is there anything in vanilla Illustrator or a plugin out there that gives me Photoshop-like locking? With the ability to lock position, snapping, appearance all seperately. 
• Is what I'm experiencing actually a bug or is it intended?