I'm kind of confused by what you mean when you said "Drawing and playing an additional tile in the middle of the meeple placement stage is not exactly ideal" as it seems to me you have already done your meeple placement step when you took back your abbot as that is an option you can take instead of placing one of your meeples.
In the Big Box 2017 the rules state the turn sequence as follows:
Step 1. Place A Tile
Step 2. Place A Meeple
Or Remove And Score The Abbot
Step 3. Score A Feature
Move Your Scoring Meeple Or Messenger Along The Scoreboard
If I finish a city in step 1, get a message in step 2 when scoring the abbot , I have not yet reached step 3 and scored the city I finished. Am I supposed to let the message I get in step 2 to wait until the end of step 3?
Here is what happens...
1. You placed the tile
2. You removed the Abbot early to score it instead of placing a meeple.
3. You score the Abbot and all features that are completed by placing the tile at the same time.
4. You move your scoring meeple the Abbot's points on the score board while moving the messenger all other points received. Thus one or both land on a dark space.
5. This causes you to draw a message which tells you to play another tile...
6. Since you have finished all the steps of the previous tile including scoring, you now place the new tile.
This is no different than if you would receive a bonus tile from the builder. Think of it like receiving a bonus play after finishing the current play. If playing with the builder and messengers, you can potentially place 3 tiles before play moves to the next player. Now just as you only can receive one bonus builder play, you only get one message per turn.