Re initialize grid manually with fresh set of settings

I have a scenario when one grid could be replaced with another one with completely new set of data/features. However, I can't see a way to destroy existing grid and initialize a new one in its place. I saw couple issues when people were trying to init gridOptions after an async event and they could not. I haven't seen a solution to this though. It seems relevant to the question I'm asking, so I just put it out there. It also seems inconvenient that features can only be declared via a directive. There is no way to enable a certain feature via javascript.

Any help is appreciated.