What feels more "natural" is likely to be influenced by what you already know. I've always felt that JSX felt unnatural and Vue's and Svelte's way of doing it feels more natural.
Why javascript, though? That preference, again, seems based on what you’re used to.
The actual goal is to manipulate the DOM based on state changes using a declarative representation.
Javascript seems more like something that was available rather than a good fit. (In fact, they felt like it was a bad enough fit that JSX had to be added to the mix.)
Setting aside any particular framework, HTML seems like a better fit to me… it’s inherently declarative and, of course, has a well understood, well supported relationship with the DOM. Extensions to bind state can be pretty well contained.