I don't think the actual distinction here is between noun/adjective/verbal clauses. It's easy to think of verbal clauses that behave in exactly the same way as the noun and adjective clauses listed, eg.
佐藤さんはワインを飲んでいます。
佐藤さんは毎日映画を見ます。
In these cases, は is the neutral choice, and rephrasing them to use が would indicate a specific question being answered ("who is drinking wine?" or "who watches movies every day?") in the same way as the noun and adjective clauses mentioned.
The reason why 佐藤さんが来た behaves differently is because when talking about someone arriving, they're usually not yet a natural topic of conversation. It's unlikely that two speakers happened to feel like discussing Satou-san and, as an extension of that conversation, decided to mention that he just arrived. More likely is that Satou-san just arrived, and this is why he is suddenly brought up. As such, が is generally used in this sentence, because one of the main functions of が is to introduce new information.
Incidentally, if two speakers were talking about Satou-san and decided to mention that he arrived as part of that discussion, using は would be perfectly natural, eg. 「佐藤さんっていつも来るのが遅いよね。」「あ、佐藤さんは今来たみたいだよ？」 In fact, in a case like this, using が would be strange, because it would imply that the subject has changed even though it has not.
Also, in your question you seem to assume that changing the が to a は in 佐藤さんが来た has the same effect as changing the は to a が in the given noun/adjective clauses, but this is not the case at all. When using が instead of は in (for instance) 佐藤さんが社長です, this emphasises "It is Satou-san who is the president.", as if to answer the question "Who is the president?"
But when using は instead of が in 佐藤さんは来た, this does not mean "It is Satou-san who came", and cannot answer the question "Who was the person that came?" (In both of these cases, が would still be the correct choice.) Rather it means "Well, as for Satou-san, he came...", with an implied contrast to other possible topics (people who may not have come). This sentiment is always expressed using は, never が.
For instance, consider the following usages:
「お前は何で来なかったの？佐藤さんは来たよ！」
「お前は何でまだ社長になっていないの？佐藤さんはもう社長だよ！」
Regardless of what type of sentence we're dealing with, this kind of contrastive usage always requires は. The difference is that the 佐藤さんは社長だ uses は by default, so when seen in isolation it doesn't necessarily seem like a contrastive usage, whereas 佐藤さんは来た uses が by default, so there must be some other reason such as this contrastive usage to justify the use of は instead.
In other words, both 佐藤さんは来た and 佐藤さんが社長だ imply some kind of special emphasis, but this is only because they are both different from the default form you would expect from that sentence. The type of emphasis is completely different. Some types of emphasis require は, and others require が, and this overrides whatever the default usage would be.
