A major problem with the old syllabus (from an educational perspective) was that it was overly constrained. Every question had to be tied to at least one dot point. Thus, you could be asked about increasing the yield for the Haber process, but not for another industrial process where similar considerations were important. Students could rote learn the Haber process without actually being able to apply the principles of equilibrium to a any other specific case. The new syllabus fixes this by citing examples that could be used as cases but not mandating that no other case can be examined. The "including but not limited to" wording that you cite is an example where the syllabus allows for flexibility. It does not mean that an exam would cover some obscure special case that few students would have encountered, but it does mean a question could treat the effect of pressure on rate in a gas-phase reaction or the role of a catalyst in optimising an industrial process.
I agree with Jazz that textbooks provide a useful guide to what is reasonably examinable in relation to such parts of the syllabus. Typical coverage of rates of reaction would include surface area, concentration / pressure, temperature, and catalysts. Stirring / mixing is less clear as they bring in some atypical cases. For example, a reaction occurring at the interface of two immiscible liquids would clearly be faster if stirred as mixing is increased, for reasons akin to the surface area issues with a solid. Mixing would also alter the rate of a diffusion-controlled reaction but I think that would be unfair to test without significant scaffolding.
