Rofl dude what? not powerfull, gates made lee a freaking monster in the ps2 games, that was faster then the 4th and he could activate it at will, at the expense of some health(not much at all), you must be talking about the crappy gamecube games ;P.
Anyway in this game the "awakening mode" is only available when you are down to your last bar of health, which is the same for every char. So lee will prolly only be able to use gates then.