My understanding is the game doesn’t remember the order you got the letters in from ball-to-ball, it basically resets the sequential flag at start-of-ball based on what letters are lit. So if you have the beginning letters lit at start-of-ball (F, F-I, or F-I-L), you can get the sequential bonus, even if you spelled those out of order on the previous ball.
I’ve never seen M-L-I-F work personally, maybe it’s a ROM revision thing?