Cygwin is awful compared to WSL. Poor performance, always gotchas, cygpath handling etc. Sure it was a good option back in the day and a good engineering feat.
With WSL I get an environment that behaves exactly like Linux, complete POSIX without gotchas.
I work with WSL all the time on files located on Windows partions. Works perfectly. Just create symlinks in WSL to Windows folders and you are ready to go.
Why do people even need to work with files in the hidden system folder? The only files that I maybe want to change from Windows to WSL would be .bashrc et al, but just copy it or edit them from WSL and problem solved.
If I don't want to use WSL and I only need a shell, then MSYS2 is the way to go, handles Windows and POSIX paths interchangeably without the cygpaths hassle.
And no, WSL is not like SFU, that never really worked.