Additionally, I think RN has come a really long way from where it was when Expo first came about. Expo sought to smooth over a lot of rough edges, some of which no longer exist.
I think Expo realizes this as well, as their main revenue generator is now their deployment tools. The framework is opinionated toward using those paid services, which my org doesn't want to use as we already have processes for building and deploying, which makes working with it cumbersome.