I agree that Joyal's species are sort of key here, although the kinds of data types being considered here are not exactly the same thing.
My guess is that 1/(1-A) should be seen as a kind of "generating function" for the power series 1 + A + A^2 + ... and that the relevance of power series can be explained by some simplicial structure hiding somewhere. It's certainly true that one can take derivatives and integrals of these data types: see Conor McBride, The Derivative of a Regular Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts.