Airflow can certainly be frustrating and it doesn't solve _all_ workflow orchestration problems. Surely the same thing can be said of many tools? This seems mostly like a mismatch of expectations.
Obviously there are trade-offs with either approach, but then I'd argue that making Airflow solve more problems will introduce more trade-offs too.
It is rarely clear what the hard problems will be when new to a domain. Only as scale kicks in.
We are constantly pitched frameworks that sell themselves as a good approach to a domain, but then obstruct engagement with the hardest problems when it matters. The developer becomes captive of the system that claimed it would steer them right.
This is particularly true of fields where the hard problems are integration problems which, by their nature, cannot be outsourced to frameworks.