I don't have a problem with the idea of making each component have a render function which can be called whenever you need to render or re-render the component and I concede that there is some elegance in being able to construct a complex HTML component using a single template string. But you don't need React to do this. This idea of rendering a component whenever its internal state changed existed long before React.

React didn't even invent the idea of reactive components; that was Angular 1. I honestly don't know why React became so popular initially. After Angular 1, there was Google's Polymer which was far more elegant and closer to native Web Components (and fixed many of Angular 1's flaws) - I suspect it's because some devs didn't like that you had to use some polyfills for certain non-Chrome browsers.

Anyway now we have Web Components which work consistently without polyfills on all browsers so I don't see any reason not to use plain Web Components or use something more lightweight such as Lit elements.