What you call elasticity most people call surface tension. I don’t see any analogy between surface tension and the universe.
My analogy is: The universe can be like that droplet of water in space. It expands in all directions, but if we could somehow go to the very border of the universe, a wall of universe, so to speak.... that wall may have a surface tension. And like the droplet, it reaches a certain diameter depending on it's volume, but retains the shape until that tension is broken. Anyhow within that droplet are millions of atomes, interacting with one another, repelling from one another, just like stars and galaxies, but all subject to that surface tension.
But that could be the vicadin talking....