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Excellent data to start with, and the star removal worked remarkably well.
One justification might be that the bulk of the visible stars are well in front of the nebulosity, not actually a part of it, and not behind it either, as the dust is relatively opaque. Thus the star removal shows what the nebulosity might look like if we were out there, very close to it, with the bulk of the visible stars behind us.
A philosophical thought: if there was a very bright star, burning out to a radius large compared with the seeing, then detail out to that radius would be forever lost, because the information was not in the original photo. To be able to reconstruct a starless image even in principle, we require a very sharp original image, such as you have taken, and stars that are not burned out to any appreciable distance relative to the seeing.
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