If I read you right, you want a way to replace list A with list B in a region, rather than open up the list and make changes to it. I don't think search and replace has region as one of its scope options, but it will do it for a whole cell at a time, which reduces the effort by a factor.
You wouldn't want to edit the list, as that would affect it in all regions. Creating a new restricted list for each region also avoids the rule-of-one problem of another mod putting it all back the way it was.