> Also, once map(), filter() and reduce() are gone, there aren't a whole lot of places where you really need [lambda].

By far the most common use of lambda for me is the "key" argument for sort() or sorted(). As in something like:

foo.sort(key=lambda x:x[2])

Yes, there are itemgetter and attrgetter in operator module, but I always have to look up their names and writing the lambda expression is simply faster.