I wish they would just release a light version, without all the database, spring integration, and other crap. I just want a light language server.

wouldn't community edition fit the bill? Those things you mention are the main difference with ultimate.

Not sure. I moved to VS Code + Eclipse LS and it's such a more pleasurable experience. However, it doesn't support SBT which is the build tool my company uses.

The community edition is definitely enough for sbt projects.

Any reason you're using sbt for Java projects? That's an odd combination. Anyway, I believe Metals is getting close to supporting this particular use case if you want to keep using VS Code.

For some odd reason my company chose the play framework + Java. It's one of the most baffling choices I've ever seen. I've actually managed to get the Java plugins to work with sbt, but it doesn't understand when a Scala object is imported.

Just deactivate the plugins?

Try power saving mode (look in ctrl+shift+a).