So what's this API do? Allow you to ditch vimscript for lua or something else?
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of vim scripts are written in vimscript. So even if you switch to using some other language to script vim, virtually all the rest of the vim ecosystem will still be in vimscript.
https://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/15/why-neovim-is-better-than-...
Example for python from the post
import vim
# Show current directory in Vim
cwd = vim.eval('getcwd()')
vim.command(':Explore %s | redraw' % cwd)
Technically it's python, but it's a shim.