If you or your company needs a basic website, then wordpress will almost always take you as far as you need to go. There's not a huge need for devs and nobody who's good at the web wants to be there because it's a race to the bottom financially. That part of the web (the overwhelming majority I might add) is pretty stagnant with few real changes or advancements having happened in the past decade.
Apps failed in that nobody wants to install your app on their device unless it's a game, a free utility, or one of a few popular apps made by large companies. WebOS got the idea of web technologies right, but the devices were too limited. Today, the idea of a web app that runs everywhere is very appealing and much more accessible to clients. All the new frameworks are really targeting this kind of use. Pounding the square that is web apps through the round hole that is the browser is hard, but still better than the alternatives.
If you're making a website, jQuery and simple JS is usually all you need. If you're making a web app with complex data and complex UI, you need a framework to keep things sane.