Did gold have any uses outside of coinage/decoration that gave it intrinsic value beyond its scarcity and difficulty to extract prior to its technological uses?

First, it was not that hard to actually extract gold. It's pretty inert stuff, doesn't form compounds as easily as most other metals. So, it was not complicated process of smelting or reducing it, like iron, to get it to a metallic form. It's also very heavy, heavier than the rocks it's found in, so separation was not too difficult. Filtering little flakes from alluvial deposits could be done with simple methods like sluicing river sand and water over a sheepskin ( yes, perhaps the basis for the Golden Fleece). Smashing and crushing gold-bearing quartz and agitating it in water in a pot would result in the gold settling to the bottom. So, although gold was not a common metal, in a way it was more accessible than iron to cultures equipped only with very basic technology.

Gold is also very easy to work with a hammer, is very malleable. This means that it can be pounded very thin, and so a little could be made to go a long way, when it came to creating gold jewelry. A lot of the Scythian ornamentation for robes and belts was quite thin. Because it was so inert, gold was also not that difficult to cast- not because it melted a low heat ( much of the ancient gold, found with silver, would require around 1,700 F) , but because it would come from the mold somewhat bright, did not require much pickling or abrasion to remove a layer of oxide or fire scale from the casting.. As for uses: just because something is ornamental does not mean it does not also have use. A Scythian gold broach would hold a robe together. A gold tip to a belt or a cord would make the belt or cord easier to tie and keep it from fraying, a gold tip to a bow scabbard might be more durable than a wooden one. And gold alloyed with some copper, silver or other metals can be fairly hard- King Tut's tomb had a dagger made of gold alloy that contained some arsenic. That acted to make it stronger ( though it almost certainly naturally occurred with the gold: the Egyptians didn't have pure arsenic around to add to things) And it is also thought that the iron dagger found in the tomb was made from meteoric iron. Which leads of course to the intriguing question as to which the Egyptians would have thought was more valuable: the gold dagger, which was made from stuff found on earth; or the iron one, which could only be made from something that very, very rarely fell from the sky.

Alfred George Warnford Lock: Gold and Its Extraction

Esther Jacobson: The Art of the Scythians