No, Ubuntu's phone efforts refused to take a stance of promising open-source drivers (because they didn't care about solving this problem for their users, they just wanted to be a phone OEM). Whether the kernel has the Android patches or not isn't the important factor; it's whether the device drivers (kernel and userspace) can be maintained by the community.
I would hazard to say Ubuntu didn't try it, they just looked like they were going to try it, but never did. Releasing only a handful of phones, not making a fully functional 1.0 release isn't trying, it's just testing the waters.
I bought an Ubunutu phone.
It had potential but it was too late to the game. It didn't get any developer momentum behind it, so it was lacking in apps, while Android got way better in the year and a half that I owned one.
I kind of agree. The Ubuntu phone was the first phone I've had that I didn't hate. That being said, it wasn't ever stable enough to get developers behind it, so it didn't have very many apps.