Gimp should absolutely be able to print but it shouldn’t be able to configure printing on the device, which is unfortunately what cups-control does. Ideally it would use the printing portal or something other than cups-control (eg, cups could provide an unprivileged socket for just printing). Perhaps you could do something along the lines of what I outlined in Auto-connection of removable-media for polarr? to guide users on how to enable printing?
-1 to auto-connect cups-control at this time.