It would be highly problematic if all you had to do was press the keys E or R without focusing a message and it would start editing or replying a message at random, hence why it currently requires focusing a message just like on Discord (press Tab, then arrow key up and down to traverse the message tree). It wouldn't make sense if the minute you accidentally typed the letter E or R in the text composer, it started editing or replying to a message (it wouldn't know which message, either, disregarding the fact that typing the letters E or R in regular text would be somewhat common, but I don't know why I'm explaining this :P).
Closing this in favour of @probablyjassin's discussion linked above: https://feedback.fluxer.com/p/1423.
Thread
Comment by Hampus