My understanding is that because Play is still in beta, not all the features have been added to it yet.
Difference between play and live?

The big difference that I can see is that you don't seem to be able to play the computer bots (yes, the very same that chess.com has been endlessly hyping) in Beta. In live you can play them for rating points and you can choose whatever level bot you want to challenge (although if you beat up a really weak bot, you may not get any points). I'm sure there are other differences though. Anyone else care to help?

Basically soon live will be removed for play, it looks better and feels better, if you want to versus computer or make analysis chess.com will make a new page for those things, basically chess.com is doing a slow remake of the whole website!

'Live' is far far far better than 'Play'.
Play's lack of viewable open challenges is a massive omission that keeps me using Live.
Also, the tournament pop over in play is really annoying.
I don't like the new experience at all.
The fact that play has been in beta for 2 years or more now, says it all.
If we lose the live version, and play does not have the features that live had... I'll be going back to FICS.
What is the difference between play and live on chess.com?