I do very little vba in Excel.
You can reach both Content Controls and legacy form fields in the Word object model. Content Controls can have tags and form fields can be given bookmark names.

ActiveX is very old technology. Among other problems is that it does not work on Mac platforms.

"Template," in Word jargon, is a very specialized tool. Templates in Microsoft Word Word templates have a lot of power. The meaning in Word is both more and less than in standard English.