You're talking about a few-dollar problem.
I don't want a fragile USB-C port on my phone. The lightning port is a joy to use - reliable both in terms of the retention mechanism and connectivity, and easy to clean of debris.
The EU gave the industry an ultimatum in 2009: Adopt a common charger voluntarily or we'll regulate to force you to do so. Almost all manufacturers did, first with micro-USB before moving over to USB-C.
Eventually, because Apple decided not to play well with others, they had to follow through and regulate.
Lighting connector is actually better than USB-C for a phone charger, there is no little contact to snap off inside a lighting port and it’s easy to clean pocket lint out of the lighting port with a tooth pick.
This isn’t the case with USB-C, it’s more fragile and harder to remove debris with damaging it which is why I think apple use it for iPad but not iPhone.
The battery thing is good though, I have seen way too many people using devices with swollen batteries because they are way beyond their useful lifetime.
I don’t know this for sure but I would hope the software on the phone can prevent this on modern devices.
With lightening the cable side is the fragile part, with usb-c the male part of the connection is inside the phone’s socket. This is the fragile part of the usb-c connection.
It makes more sense for the fragile part to be on the cable rather than the phone itself because the phone is more expensive and would need a repair but the cable is cheap enough that you can replace it.
Other than this though, usb-c is far superior to lightening with better data speed and power delivery.