Yes, I had to save manually all the time.
In editor, you can control precision better, easy copy, mirror, leverage folder management etc, but the result will look different when you start the game, building in edit mode ensures all will look like it should in the game mode.
Ended up not using it because of selection bugs (can grab audio player instead of highlighted prop I want to copy etc). For new maps, I will probably start with live editing again, then switch to editor only.