Do you really know how complex Win32 GUI is on low level? Yet Delphi manages it nicely and wraps it up into handy abstractions.

I don't really know anything on low level.

But I've never seen any layout render engine with the same feature set as modern HTML/CSS engines.

XAML is comparable.

HTML has more features about layout. Also styling is more flexible in HTML.

XAML has better rendering (esp. in WPF), better alpha blending (esp. in UWP), much better animations, better vector graphics, and better editor (you can create acceptable layouts using WYSIWYG, not touching raw markup). Also it has templating, data binding, and other features not found in HTML.

I imagine you never used Qt, Gtk, Motif, NeXTStep, XAML, iOS or Android layout managers, for citing a few possible examples.

True, iOS and Android have fairly decent native render engines.

Other technologies cited are very limited, not even close to what current web technologies offer.

Given my experience in both worlds, I fail to see in what aspect web can beat those native layout engines.

Because until recently even basic stuff like centering text or grid layouts were an exercise in frustration.

Not to mention the magical incantation dance with CSS transforms to try to force a browser to use hardware acceleration.

Or nonsense like Shadom DOM to be able to define some sort of components, which are only properly supported on Chrome.

Bubble.is is Delphi for the web, but better.