I think your characterization is much too pessimistic here. There are people using Lightning, while keeping self-custody, but not needing a node (see e.g. Phoenix), able to reliably pay bills with it (failure rates basically zero) for years now.
There are lots of merchants accepting bitcoin that succeed in adding Lightning as “just another payment option”. The infrastructure is there now, even if the mindshare isn’t (certainly outside of bitcoiners, it isn’t!).
(Apologies for the relatively irrelevant to the OP commentary)