Is there a way to copy paste variables, state diagrams, events and the like without having to recreate everything manually.

Not currently. This should improve in upcoming releases. The best way right now is if you have a config you consider your "baseline config", just make copies of it. If you add a feature, add to the baseline first, then your new configs can inherit.

As we started adding copy/paste, we started with the one that caused people the most heartache - copying and pasting screens and screen objects. The logic is much simpler to type back in.

Database will probably be the next priority.

This one is coming in 2.3.