I told the genius straight out why I visited.
If your story is otherwise weak, and they read between the lines, Im their shoes, I would be annoyed.
I would agree. If you are truly having issues with the device, then tell them that. But if you are not, then I would try honesty. It worked for me.
But, just FYI - You mentioned you are dropping WiFi, but then you mentioned also getting intermittent drops to Edge or No Service in some cases. I'm thinking they might say they two issues are unrelated, as the Edge/No Service issue is cellular related, where the other is WiFi. They might suggest you try to swap out the SIM chip for a new one, as a lot of times, a bad SIM can be the cause of signal drops like that.
The WiFi issue, it'll be up to their discretion on what's going on there, and whether to swap it or not.
Just giving you a heads up on what you might hear from them, if you go in with those issues.
Do you have more than one Apple store near you? If so, what I would do is go in and try the honesty route at the first store, and if that doesn't work, then go to the other and tell them about the issues. Either that, or be upfront and honest about the issues and wanting the AWS version at the first store, and see if they would just do it. Your call.