Don't wake me up

“I just mean…come on! There has to be someone else!” I looked to Stratt. “What about Yáo’s backup? Or Ilyukhina’s?” “They’re not biologists,” said Stratt. “They’re incredibly skilled people with a nose-to-tail expertise on the Hail Mary, its operations, and how to repair damage. But we can’t train someone in all the cellular biology they need to know in the time we have. It would be like asking the world’s best structural engineer to do brain surgery. It’s just not their field.” (Chapter 23)

Rocky was pretty stoked to have access to his much larger ship again. First thing he did was set up a tunnel directly from his portion of the Hail Mary to the Blip-A. It meant another hole in my hull, but at this point I trust Rocky to do any engineering task. Heck, if he wanted to do open-heart surgery on me, I’d probably let him. The guy is amazing at this stuff. (Chapter 25)

Here are some limitations and ideas that come to mind:

In the book, a lot of the lab equipment might have been rendered nonfunctional after the Adrian misadventure: "that delicate off-the-shelf lab equipment wasn’t designed to be rattled around like popcorn and subjected to 6 or 7 g’s. I wonder how many things are hopelessly broken."

The ship is at 1.5 g when the engine is on, and 0 g when/if the engine is off. It's unclear whether they'd be able to use the centrifuge during transit: it may or may not be dangerous at near light speed, and it wasn't designed for use with the full fuel tanks. This means that any equipment calibrated for use in 1 g only is likely off limits.

As other people have pointed out, in the movie version in thrust configuration the lab is sideways and pretty hard to access. I mean, they could make a ladder or turn off the engine temporarily, but they can't just hang out in there all the time and use whatever they need.

Even if we set aside Rocky's anxiety over Grace's health that has become common fanon by now — the mission is not over yet! Each other's safety is going to be priority number one. Nothing invasive, nothing even remotely dangerous without necessity.

I assume one of the things they do during the journey is compiling a dossier on how to keep Grace alive for the Eridian scientists. If there's any data they can gather to help with it, that's what they would be doing. If nothing else, Grace should be doing regular routine health checkups and keeping track of all changes. (Rocky can do the ultrasound with his sonar if he wants.)