We had a similar issue when developing our system security strategy and settings.

Following the VMware Security Guidance and the example PowerCLI contained within it, we initially believed SLPD and CIM services were safe. The snippets of script in the guidance not spitting out a list of non-compliant hosts. Only the systems were failing IT Health Checks (pen-tests).

When we went to the ESXi CLI and checked the services there we found the services were indeed still active.

On digging we found that if the SLPD service in particular, would only be manageable if it was visible in the webclient GUI. If it wasn't the PowerCLI commands given in the guidance would in actually give you an invalid response. We fed this back to VMware via our TAM along with other observations about the security guidance which apparently caused a bit of a ruckus.

I think (but not 100% certain) that the security guidance is now OK on this point for ESXi 7.0u3, for versions older than that, I wouldn't trust the guidance, and would resort to using scripting over SSH as JDMils_Interact did.