Skating skills etc. are important but the jumps and spins are what make singles figure skating interesting to watch.
No. Not even remotely so. What makes skating entertaining to watch is creative programs skated to the music and skaters showing the whole package.
I can't imagine anything more boring than somebody skating from jump to jump. I'd rather watch paint dry.
And in any case, it's irrelevant what is or what isn't interesting to us.
Figure skating is a sport where everything counts and not just jumps and it makes me profoundly depressed that even a lot of the skating fans seem to be unable to acknowledge that.
Technical elements is what makes the sport a sport in most people's eyes. There's a reason why figures and compulsory dances don't exist anymore, and a reason why ice dancing is surging in popularity compared to before the CoP system.
Developing strong basics takes as much time, work and effort as learning your jumps, if not more so because it's harder to grasp and the results are not immediate in the same way.
Performing a program which features complex choreography, a lot of upper body movement and transitions take an enormous amount of strength and stamina and makes performing the technical elements much more difficult.