If the disabled phone was not backed up to the cloud , or mac then the data cannot be recovered?

That is a true statement unfortunately. Backups must be made before the disaster strikes.

If you synced data to iCloud (which is completely separate from iCloud Backup) or some other cloud service (Livedrive, box.com, dropbox, Microsoft onedrive, google drive, etc) you can resync that data after restoring the phone.

That is correct. If you did not have a backup made before the device was disabled, then there is nothing to recover.

You're welcome.