Seems like the timeout applies everywhere but on the watch page (i.e. when the screen is locked). I'm not certain what the expected behavior is, so I'll follow up with the 920 team to see if I can find out. This may be by design, but if it is, I don't know what the intent is (aside from maybe saving battery life when it's in low power mode).
Yes, sorry--the back light also always uses 8 seconds on the widget pages on the FR920XT because it's also considered to be in low power mode when widgets are in use (even though I realize this isn't explicitly true).
It looks like this decision was made at the product level because I checked a Fenix 3 a moment ago, and it respects the user's back light settings on widget pages.