In a general sense, it sounds like you're going about things in a correct way; constructing graphics in Illustrator and bringing them into InDesign layouts.
I swear I have placed Illustrator files into Indesign before and it did not automatically turn them into pictures, but I also placed much smaller projects and things that were supposed to be pictures. Some of these elements are text boxes for headings and subheadings. I would like these to be easily manipulated in InDesign even though I created them in Illustrator. My question is: 1) Do I just need to recreate these elements in Indesign, and create all the infographics of data in Illustrator and place in them in InDesign as photos? Because InDesign is the easiest program to lay out a book. 2) Or is there an easier way to lay out a book in Illustrator that I am missing?
This is where the nature of your problems becomes unclear. You aren't providing enough detail as how you're moving the Illustrator work into InDesign. Ideally, you would save the Illustrator work in its native .ai format and use InDesign's Place command to import and link it to the InDesign file. This would not "turn it into a picture" or a "photos" as you mention later, unless you rasterized it all in Illustrator anyway. A properly placed (linked) Illustrator graphic would re-open in Illustrator in the same editable state that was saved, using the Edit Original feature from InDesign's Links panel. If you want relatively simple elements from Illustrator for use in InDesign, Copy/Paste can work for that, as long as you have your clipboard preferences set up accordingly.
Some of that might serve as an answer to your question #1. To question #2, I'd answer a simple "no."