Using MAP, for most students, helps early in the piece to balance the typical limitations of the visual system on the box.
The reality, for most boxes, is that you need to do a bit of both (looking outside and playing with the screen) to make it work reasonably tidily and keep up a reasonable rate of student progress .. just an acknowledgement of the reality of the limitations.
Unless your box has very good side vision you really just can't fly it like you would pole a light twin around the circuit ..
So far as the instructor is concerned, I suggest that he is just trying to get you up to speed as quickly as he can while acknowledging the time pressures on box availability and the amount of stuff he has to cover during the endorsement sequences.
Having trouble coping at the start with the buttons .. join just about everyone else on their first fancy aircraft .. I just wonder how people cope with transitioning from a lightie straight onto the Airbus cockpit ... I don't know that I would have liked that prospect ... Apache onto F27 confused me enough at the time ..