Reinstall Lion whilst retaining files & user settings - doable from USB stick?

Apple have an article (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3878) about how to reinstall Lion whilst retaining all your files & user settings... but the article only mentions doing it from the Recovery partition, which would then download the installer from scratch.

Is it possible to reinstall "in place" (retaining all files & settings) from a USB bootable installer made from the App Store Lion installer?

I just don't wanna forge ahead with the USB stick method and inadvertently perform a complete reinstall...

 

*bump*

Anyone with any thoughts?