Regarding wildcard certs, eh. I wouldn't say they have a bad reputation. Sure, greater blast radius. But sometimes it can certainly simplify things to use one. Your ACME client configuration is easier and your TLS terminator configuration often becomes easier when the terminator would otherwise need to switch based on SNI.
As for wildcard certs, I agree there are use cases where we really need them like dynamic subdomains {customer}.status.com
Can you share how they make ACME client configuration easier?
It's not a profound difference, but you don't need to add each name to your config. Depending on the team's tooling and processes, that may be inconsequential. But in a setting where config management isn't handled super well, where the TLS terminator is a resource shared by multiple, distinct teams, this is a simplification that can make a difference at the margin.
Think less Cloudflare-scale, and more SMB scale (especially in a Windows shop or recovering Windows shop with a different kind of technical culture than what we might all be implicitly imagining).