A question about `--user` installations of extensions

When I do a --user installation of an extension e.g., pip install --user example.whl, the extension gets installed into .local/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/example. And, the json file that activates the server part of the extension gets installed in .local/etc/jupyter/jupyter_server_config.d/example.json.

However, it appears that that isn’t one of the places where JupyterLab looks for the json file, as the server extension doesn’t show up when I execute jupyter lab extension list. When I copy jupyter_server_config.d into the .jupyter directory of my home directory, then JupyterLab is able to find the server extension.

Is it supposed to work that way?

Here is some relevant information regarding the environment.

adpatter@server:~$ /opt/jupyterhub/bin/jupyter --version
Selected Jupyter core packages…
IPython : 8.0.1
ipykernel : 6.9.0
ipywidgets : 7.6.5
jupyter_client : 7.1.2
jupyter_core : 4.9.1
jupyter_server : 1.13.5
jupyterlab : 3.1.7
nbclient : 0.5.10
nbconvert : 6.4.1
nbformat : 5.1.3
notebook : 6.4.8
qtconsole : 5.2.1
traitlets : 5.1.1