The easiest way to change the host name is to do the thing you don't want to do.
Keep a copy of your $TOMCAT_HOME/content/las/conf/server directory.
Re-run configure with the new host name.
Verify the new host works using the default data sets.
Install your data set configuration from the saved conf/server directory and restart your server.
To continue to debug the set up with the changed host name you can press the print button on the UI which will place the missing image on a plain HTML page. Check the URL of the image and see if it points to the new or old host.
Run a find/grep on \*.xml in your $LAS_HOME directory with the old host name and see if you can find one you've missed.
Roland