Agreed. I see zero chance that Edge will suddenly be ported back to Windows 7. And it would be almost as big of a shock if the Chromium-based Edge is not UWP.
I stand corrected--this is exactly what they're going to do. Take Win32 Chromium, rename it Edge, and build it for Win7, 8, and 10. What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP.
The fact is that if they want to support Windows 7, 8.1 and macOS it naturally cannot be kept as UWP app, as their infrastructure requires Windows 10 features.
In this case, I think "supported" means what Microsoft calls "Mainstream Support" (1). Windows 7 and 8.1 are both in "Extended Support", which only gets security updates.
Mainstream support for Win7 ended in 2015, for Win8.1 in January 2018. The only mainstream supported versions of Windows are various Windows 10 editions.