Sometimes letting the battery drain completely will clear a hung phone (which is like the old "take the battery out for 5 minutes, then try it again" trick). Or the service center knew the magic buttons to press to get it to boot. Or the battery was bad. Or one of a million other reasons that a phone can fail in a way that makes it appear dead, but a service tech knows how to get it running.
That's what I think. Either no lock method, they're lying, or there's an unknown exploit or backdoor. Either way I'd be interested to know the outcome of this. As a Pixel user it's concerning.