Built in scoped CSS is a great idea and compiled bundle is nice. I used it for multiple projects (order system, admin panels, etc) and it always feels that little bit more brittle when I use Svelte vs something more mature. I won't use it again for any project.
I have less experience with Next and it was longer ago but iirc I found it needlessly hard to use and deploy as well as some problems with Image tags (you need the exact size of the images?). I also found their gamified tutorial really off-putting and indicative of corporate bloat which I guess makes sense now that they're locking users in. The reason I used it was for page loading speed optimization (SSR) and didn't find any better alternatives that use React at the time. I use Next for my landing page https://audiodiary.ai and for its admin panel.
FWIW you're describing a legacy syntax — modern Svelte has explicit effects, and addresses your other concerns. I think you'll find it's much more to your liking https://svelte.dev/docs/svelte/$effect