It seems potentially useful to allow install profiles to be run, not only at site creation, but also at any point afterwards. That would make them useful for publishing "recipes" which would mostly involve the creation of site building items such as content types, views, and fields. However, they could also be used to install contrib modules, themes, and layouts where necessary.

This would allow users to use a install profile even after they have installed backdrop and otherwise started building their sites. And it would allow them to run more than one install profile, each of which would provide a different set of functionality.

GitHub Issue #: 
1591