They're being careful because they don't want to wreck their launch pad.

On the previous flight, they were going for the same ocean soft landing as this flight, but several engines on the booster failed to start during the landing burn (reportedly due to ice clogging propellant feed). Had this crash not happened they likely would have tried for a tower catch today.

They want to be sure the mitigation for this failure worked before they put the pad & tower at risk.

Towers are expensive. Boosters are cheap. And the reliability metrics on low-serial-number Raptor 3's don't make the modest benefits worth the risk.