Have worked in “traffic” courts as a court employee.
As regards the DMV clearing your license without the court’s permission, you have it wrong.
The DMVs of each state have statutory authority beyond the courts.
The courts can say, okay you have no open cases before them, but the DMV may still restrict your license based on their statutory rules for restricting(or unrestricting) your license.
You may have a current pending traffic case, but a prior restriction, based on other citation(s), may have expired- statutorily while you are dealing with a new case which might not have any DMV restriction associated with it.
In the case of a DMV hold, which a court can ask the DMV to do if you fail to apoear or pay a fine, and you go to court seeking to reset the case or renew making payments, the court may lift the hold as a matter of course, not telling you or making a big deal of it on the record.
You may have a lot of traffic cases and simply can’t keep track of them. Often the case.