In Ghostscript Git repo, all the TTF version of URW fonts does not have any GSUB/GPOS features, but OTF version does.
I believe, looking at the fonts themselves, the TTF versions are generated to the TTF spec, *not* the OTF spec (although I haven't gone through them comprehensively). Even in OTF, the OTF specific tables are optional, so the fonts are perfectly valid as they stand. When we have another *real* problem with the fonts, we'll mention this to URW++ as well - they may agree to include those features.
URW does not consider this a bug: "the OTF features in the OTF fonts are only very few GSUB features and the kerning which we have in the kern table in the TTF versions (sic). We can re-release the TTF fonts with GSUB/GPOS tables but in my opinion this should be done later. There is no functional difference between OTF and TTF now." We can leave this open as an enhancement or close it possibly with "LATER"