Is this an intended feature? I've made a couple of programs involving a turtle placing other turtles for big projects, but the placed turtles don't actually boot up until I click on them myself. How can I make them automatically start?

Turtles placed by players don't automatically turn on either, it's when they are first right-clicked that turns them on.

Also, you can wrap computers (which includes turtles) and then use them as a peripheral, one of their peripheral methods allows you to turn them on remotely.

Also, this would be better as a discussion, there should be an option to convert this issue into one somewhere in the right-hand panel thing.