Strong as they need to be?
The reason Laura taken down easily is because she's a
crawling artillery brick in Canon, but that still not enough, because
she is covered by heavy armor plating, which do nothing for some reason. What's more, Laura can't use her AIC for some reason, despite it was the strong point and against Gospel she should be near invicible
This fixed in Sacred Twins in that Laura managed to tank the plasma barrage seamlessly, at least until Gospel use that kamehameha attack which disabled
Charles.
Note that nobody is taken down until Gospel reach Second Shift, the fight is rather easy at first.