Here is a summary for the $\mathbb{R}^2$ situation.
Upper limit: no improvement over the 3.8 known on $\mathbb{Z}^2$.
To create specific examples I modified the $\mathbb{Z}^2$ ones by uniformely spreading each value on the lattice over a 1x1 square:
3x1: ratio ratio = 3-3/5 (vs. 3 on integers, 7x5 grid)
4x1: ratio ratio = 3-1/5 (vs. 3.5 on integers, 13x16 grid)
5x1: ratio ratio = 3-1/7 (vs. 25/7 on integers, 25x29 grid)
6x1: ratio ratio = 3-1/23 (vs. 85/23 on integers, 31x36 grid)
8x1: ratio ratio = 3-1/35 (vs. 13026/357 on integers, 39x46 grid)
7x3: ratio ratio = 3-1/75 (vs. 56/15 on integers, 59x57 grid)
11x1: ratio = 3-1/135 (vs. 101/27 on integers, 137x63 grid)
And the surprises are
- that in all cases the highest sum on a square is 1.25 that of the integral case (which is the worst case scenario, but I see no obvious reason it should always be that way), and
- we seem to be approaching 3, suggesting that for the integers perhaps the upper limit could be 3.75 and not 3.8 - but this is of course very highly speculative...