The application package delivers only the application payload and integration with the OS; it does not start anything unless it sees its own processes running,

The application package delivers only the application payload and integration with the OS; it does not start anything unless it sees its own processes running, in which case this must be an in-place upgrade, so restart the daemon(s) to unload the old and load the new code. It is the *-conf package which depends on the application package, brings on the configuration and automatically (re)starts the application.