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Markdown doesn't give you a table of contents, an index, page breaks, control over typesetting, control over table layout, captioned figures, diagramming tools, etc. The difference is about the same magnitude as between Pong and Call of Duty. Yes they're both video games, sometimes one is preferable over the other, but they are not equivalent.

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Pandoc/Quarto markdown gives you most of these.

In my experience, it rarely really matters fine control. If the effort is too big to tweak the templates/markdown you export it to an intermediate state (LaTeX/Office/whatever) and drop the original markdown source.

There is no lock-in.

Exactly, and I need those features, I'd use LaTeX (and if collaboration is needed, either git or overleaf depending on who I'm working with). For a ~1 page document of text, where there is minimal markup required, markdown through pandoc produces a nicer looking document than using the output from web-based editors (e.g. google docs, confluence), which is typically where I'm starting with .doc.

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