It's interesting that the Lion Air crew on the flight before the accident also raised the flaps while having unreliable airspeed and the stick shaker. So 3 out of 3 of the crews experiencing the failed AOA sensor did this.
Looking at the FDR traces for the previous Lion Air flight, one difference is that they also enabled the A/P, on the F/O side, when they retracted the flaps. The Ethiopian crew enabled A/P on the captain's side, and started retracting the flaps about 20 seconds later.
In both cases, MCAS activated after the A/P deactivated. For the previous Lion Air flight the fight with MCAS lasted over 4 minutes before they used the cutout switches. For the Ethiopian flight it lasted only 30 seconds.
Another difference for the Lion Air crew that saved the aircraft is that they did the unreliable air speed checklist, according to the preliminary report. And while we can't determine from the FDR trace of the previous Lion Air flight what their exact speeds were, it probably resulted in a more manageable speed.
Both crews later re-enabled electric trim (the Lion Air crew temporarily). And there is nothing in the runaway stabilizer memory items explicitly saying you should not re-enable electric trim. It does however explicitly say that for the autopilot and autothrottle: "Do not re-engage the autopilot." "Do not re-engage the autothrottle".
And, from the FDR traces, the Lion Air crew that saved the aircraft also didn't bring the aircraft to neutral trim before using the cutout switches. And later they did just what the Ethiopian crew did seconds before the crash: they re-enabled electric trim, they started trimming ANU, and MCAS started trimming AND again. Then they used the cutout switches again to stop the runway, again without bringing the aircraft to neutral trim with the thumb switches first. Then they trimmed with the trim wheels for the remainder of the flight.
I can't help but wonder if their knowledge about MCAS is what contributed significantly to the Ethiopian accident, by making them prioritize the stabilizer runaway memory items over everything else, making them tunnel vision and focus on the trim problems primarily, and ignoring other issues, like the increasing speed, and the need to perform other checklists.