Your vacc suit or survival bubble is your life pod.
For potential re-entry there is a re-entry kit that can be deployed, I would imagine in MgT terms it would have an onboard electronic expert system that operates it.
I did try to generate a re-entry kit using suit type equipment from CSC. You are maybe ok if you are already in orbit when the bailout is required (and you had better hope what you are orbiting is worth landing on), but the kit required is as expensive as an escape capsule, it requires time to don it all and a skill check to use it. The capsule per the rules just works. You also need to have an atmosphere to use the re-entry kit which reduces your choices.
Once you land all you have is what you have in your pockets. The capsule could have additional equipment (at extra cost) to help survive stowed within it. The capsule itself can be used as a shelter or at the very least cannibalised for useful materials in addition to what you have in your pockets.
The other issue is life support. 2 hours is only useful if you can repair the ship. With a suit (and presumably rescue bubble) if you had time to plan you could gather extra life support supplies but that takes time (or adds cost if it is designed into the escape solution). Suits could at least be plugged into any life support you come across (it needs to be already in a bubble).
We can extend life support with Fast Drug but extending 2 hours by a factor of 60 doesn't give you much time (5 Days) so help already needs to be on the way. Bubbles with Fast Drug are however probably better than nothing and are a cheap solution to any regulatory imposition (you have made reasonable provision to extend the window of rescue). Vacc suits are more expensive and for the untrained in their use probably more of a liability. They would be sensible for crew who might be able to recover the situation (sitting in a bubble for them doesn't help anyone). If you had to abandon ship permanently then there is extra equipment that is a reasonable expenditure for the few crew who need them.
Now I am not sure what to make of the re-entry capsule as written but it seems basically to be the same as a re-entry kit but that doesn't need you to suit up and doesn't require a skill check to make it down safely and doesn't seem to require an atmosphere to work (so presumably uses some sort of sort of grav-chute). I see the personal re-entry kit as being inferior because the cost is in addition to that of the vacc-suit and there is a skill check required to use it. It does not appear to be the escape pod that appears in the adventure that feature them.
The escape pods I am thinking of are more versatile, they are not purely re-entry capsules. My ones will have M-Drives, Power and extended life support and can deliver you to any planet in-system rather than one you already happen to be orbiting. They also have more space for supplies (and those supplies will be more suitable for wilderness survival on a range of semi-hospitable planets). They are also more expensive and take up more volume. They more closely match those in the published adventures and are more "playable".
The advantages of the escape pod vs the more flexible and cost and space efficient lifeboat (probably automated) is proximity. I envisage them as being part of your stateroom and that you will be already strapped into them at risky times. If they incorporate the beds then arguably they need not take up additional tonnage, but breakaway seems to solve the issue reasonably efficiently (as long as you need enough of them). This might make them the reserve of the single passenger staterooms and basic passengers will need to scramble for the lifeboat.
Low passengers could be simply ejected en-bloc (like in Aliens). A dedicated small powerplant for them need be no more expensive or space consuming than adding extra capacity to the main ships power plant or if you insist they could have storage batteries. They could be simply left to drift in space as it is less risky than landing them. Maybe this is why people in game don't like the idea of low berths even if the risk of death on defrost can be eliminated.
