So, it seems to need the Trezor hardware to recover a Trezor wallet.
Yes. It is one of their security feature (
https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-user/recovery.html). The Trezor screens tells you which word to enter in a random sequence (ie: word #4, word #17, word #2, etc). This way, if you steal the seed words from your best friend... you also have to invest in buying a new Trezor!
No this is not true.
If that would be true than every Trezor would need to shuffle the words the same way and that would be a lame security feature.
It looks to me that the seed words are shuffled for cases where your computer is compromised.
This way a hacker might gain access to the 24 words but not to the correct order of them so he will still have to brute force it which will take him time.
tl;drIf you have the seed you don't need to buy a Trezor.
Recovering Funds without TREZOR Device