This is the root of your consternation. Like everything in our industry - experiment, build, then judge. I was a naysayer initially too. Then I tried React, Redux, styled-components, etc. and now I'm a believer. Combine this with modern CSS like Flexbox and CSS Grid and it truly is a golden age of web development!
On the one hand: It is powerful at automating some the typical tedium you always have. It gives you a better chance to end up with a decent view model, by forcing it upon you.
On the other hand: You lose control. Almost always you can gain it back, but it is an uphill battle. If you know you need low level control (for example over complex animations and interactions in your UI) you've got to think carefully.
It all comes back to perspective. As an interaction engineer I really hate the process of trying to make a specific animation work the way I want inside of a React managed DOM. As an application developer, the purity of the approach is extremely attractive.
Also I must brush up on Grid. It's about time we got rid of god damn tables.