I have found that Signal strikes a good enough balance with E2EE that I can easily recommend Signal to anyone -- I do not find the same to be true of Matrix. While I believe Matrix to be a better choice for freedom and privacy I do not see it as a good option for non-technical users. Even for technical users I feel it can be very confusing to use unless you are already familiar with the Matrix ecosystem, jargon, etc. With Matrix, the overhead to manage sessions and your security is much higher than Signal. Sure, it's unfortunate that you have to place some trust in Signal, but it's far less confusing than having to manage your own sessions.
In my subjective and probably biased experience, Signal feels as easy as iMessage but still provides greater privacy than most other platforms (not Matrix, obviously).
I really like Matrix for myself and for dev communities. But I have a hard time seeing a future where Matrix becomes a mainstream personal messenger until the experience feels a bit more hands-off for non-tech users.