Parallelepipeds of maximal facet area and total edge length in ellipsoids, through prescribed boundary points

Let \[ \mathcal{E}_A=\{x\in\mathbb{R}^n:x^{\top}A^{-1}x\le 1\},\qquad n\ge2, \] where $A$ is real symmetric positive definite. We study full-dimensional parallelepipeds whose $2^n$ vertices lie on $\partial\mathcal{E}_A$. First we show that such parallelepipeds are necessarily centred at the origi