AG, that indeed looks like a lot of work! I would like to caution you about moving plants from shady spots to non shady spots... come summer your big shade adjusted plants might not like their new sunny spots that much. They will probably adjust eventually but not without loud protests (ie. scorched leaves), which might drive you to dig them up again.
I tend to try and limit moving plants that I have put in the ground and that are showing signs of adjusting positively to their spots, because every time you dig up a plant it will experience significant transplantation shock and will have to start the adjustment process to its new spot again. So my advice would be to think twice before actually moving a plant.
A decent reference for what takes full sun in the Phoenix area is here:
http://www.agaveville.org/view...
Keep in mind that the main poster lives in Fountain Hills at significant elevation, so what does well in the full sun for him has on occasion taken me some time to adjust properly here in the Mesa heat island, but generally the Agaves listed have taken the sun well after an adjustment period, which you should expect almost all plants to need especially if they are bought from a BB store garden center. If you go to a nursery and you see the plant looking good in full sun, then that probably translates well.
It is true though that many of the plants tend to do better in our summers when in the ground compared to being in pots in similar conditions. However, as Tarev points out it is way easier to move a pot around if a plant shows signs of distress.
Your A. potatorum just does not like our winters very much, my potted one looks very similar to yours, it will be fine once it warms up at night. I have one in the ground that did not look quite as sad, but still showed some stress.
