Spring Apply "instanceof pattern matching" and minor refactorings in spring-context

Comment From: sbrannen

Thanks for the PR.

Due to lack of feedback on the requested changes, I have merged parts of this PR into main in 8783075e40881c8ca2ee52d81c76e2f6149ace38 with further refinements in e0f60dc09d9515809963f066cdfdacebd66b0042.