Present Subjunctive differences

Solution 1:

Sentence (2) may or may not be ungrammatical, depending on whether recommends is allowed to take an infinitive complement, which not everyone finds allowable. I find (2) odd, but adding for to mark the complement subject makes it better:

  (2′) The chairman recommends for her to be here on time.

However, whether recommend works this way or not, desire definitely swings both ways,
with no grammaticality problems:

  (3) The chairman desires that they be here on time.
  (4) The chairman desires them to be here on time.

These mean the same thing, but only (3) is officially "subjunctive", because it's a that complement clause with an untensed verb (be in this case, which is always untensed and therefore easy to spot), and that's what Huddleston and Pullum call "subjunctive".

(4), on the other hand, like (2) or (2′), doesn't have a that complement clause, but rather a to-infinitive complement clause. This construction is very, very common, and it is not subjunctive.

You may have been confused because a great deal of what is written about the English "subjunctive" discusses what the construction means, rather than how to form or identify it.

That complements with untensed verbs are, in fact, usually used for "suggestion, recommendation, and obligation", of one sort or another. However, this does not mean that everything referring to suggestion, recommendation, or obligation uses this construction, nor that this makes things "subjunctive".

Such constructions depend entirely on which verbs one uses (desire works, but tell doesn't, for instance), and the verbs that govern this kind of complement are not that common; mostly we use other strategies. Meaning does not define the "subjunctive"; structure does.