A super common solution to the problem of too many ideas packed into a clever solution is just naming intermediate things. For example, naming the zip(...) is a little change that goes pretty far in making the second one more obvious:

    def maxWidthOfVerticalArea(self, points: List[List[int]]) -> int:
        xs = sorted(x for x, _ in points)
        neighboring_coordinates = zip(xs, xs[1:]))
        return max(right-left for left, right in neighboring_coordinates)

or even naming the width generator:

    def maxWidthOfVerticalArea(self, points: List[List[int]]) -> int:
        xs = sorted(x for x, _ in points)
        neighboring_coordinates = zip(xs, xs[1:]))
        widths = (right-left for left, right in neighboring_coordinates)
        return max(widths)

Same thing, just with more built in explanation. It's easy to go overboard, of course, but it's a useful go-to to make stuff more obvious.