In short, is there any solution that "does everything you could possibly want" while ensuring you _never_ need to hire a data engineer? This is a holy grail that I don't think exists.
You have to normalize data taken from various sources of various age and complexity. So you really have to understand the data. You also have to really understand the questions.
I've worked with (and on) lots of these tools and projects; the complexity is never in the frontend, it's dominated by getting the data, getting the data right and into the right format.
If all you want in the end is a good looking dashboard on a website then you might as well build it yourself; because of the cost structure that can even cost less than buying one of the BI frontend tools (there's not a lot of difference in development time, the the BI frontenders are more expensive because they are rarer and the licencing is high).
The people and their spreadsheets was the easy part to control.
Welcome to my reality.
Would I love a data architect and a domain expert in my team? Yeah.
Will I run around booking meetings with everyone that even hints at working with data like a headless hen? Yeah.
Is this the normal procedure for Data Scientists in big and old companies? More so than I would like.
Oh! And I forgot that the security department will constantly deny your access to data you need (until you force their hand).
(Disclaimer: I work in data engineering at Amazon and use those tools in my day to day)