Are meshes not used instead of gaussian splats only due to robustness reasons? I.e., if there were a piece of software that could reliably turn a colored point cloud into a textured mesh, would that be preferable?
It works well for what it does. But, it's mostly only effective for opaque, diffuse, solid surfaces. It can't handle transparency, reflection or "fuzz". Capturing material response is possible, but requires expensive setups.
A scene like this poodle https://superspl.at/view?id=6d4b84d3 or this bee https://superspl.at/view?id=cf6ac78e would be pretty much impossible with photogrammetry and very difficult with manual, traditional, polygon workflows. Those are not videos. Spin them around.
BTW I believe there is software that can turn point clouds into textured meshes reliably; multiple techniques even, depending on what your goals are.
This includes sparse areas like fences, vegetation and the likes, but more importantly any material properties like reflections, specularity, opacity, etc.
Here's a few great examples: https://superspl.at/view?id=cf6ac78e