It's not all or nothing, you can combine approaches :)

And if you're learning an alphabet where before you know 1000-2000 unique characters, you can't reasonably read anything, it's still very useful!

Plus who says that repetition techniques can't include context (like sentences for instance?), Bunpro being a pretty good example of this for learning Japanese grammar

Obviously don't just use SRS all day, consume media, read books, etc.