Certainly your opinion is as worthy of consideration as many others, I do not deny and I would not have been surprised if that had been the kind of consideration of Meade, in defending his inaction. Meade, like you assumed the position assigned was easily defensible, maybe so, but Sickles, the commander on the site, disagrees with both of You.
Sickles' concern was precisely that the position was not easily defensible, that, in fact, it was dangerously weak and exposed.
People persist in referring to as the area between Hancock's right and the RT's as a ridge, as in Cemetery Ridge. When in fact the ground rapidly subsides as it approaches LRT, until the part assigned to III Corps is lower than the ground it faces and dominated by the Plateau occupied by the Peach Orchard.
The badly depleted III Corps can barely reach the base of LRT and even then is stretched dangerously thin with no allowance for forming reserves to bolster the line when and if attached. So there could be no artillery on LRT with out infantry, which under the circumstances could only be provided by Meade. But, Meade seemed to avoid the necessity to see the area in question for himself, despite repeated pleas to do so by the commander on the spot.
P.S. In fact, there is no precise knowledge of what, exactly, was Lee's plan of operations on Day 2. As for instance right up to the attack, it seems that neither Lee nor Longstreet did know where the flank of the AoP was located, even before the arrival and placement of III Corps.