The only reason might be something only available through the lightning port. The only thing I can imagine is trying to restore from backup if the OS got messed up for some reason or the screen is broken and touch UI is not an easy option.

Just cram a bunch of lint in the port :)

Always scares me when that happens

One could remove the lightning port, or fill it with epoxy. But the lightning port is a replaceable module, so sufficiently motivated party would just perform an easy repair job of replacing a new lightning port.