Replace configurate with dict.get?

[majosm]

configurate in simutil seems to mostly be duplicating the behavior of the existing dict.get(). This issue is a reminder to look into whether configurate is actually needed.

[majosm]

Might need to handle https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30458977/yaml-loads-5e-6-as-string-and-not-a-number in read_and_distribute_yaml_data in order to avoid having to cast when retrieving from the dict.