I disagree on your first example: I've historically found the extra whitespace a huge PITA for years. It causes extra "unpredictable" spacing in your design which is usually unwanted. It's only an issue for multi-line prose. React is opinionated here but I've found it's the most useful option.

On the 2nd point, you are partially correct. In general it's a code smell - strongly consider making it a component (in part for optimization). But definition lists are specifically strange: Unlike other repeating elements in HTML they don't have a container element like tr, li, fieldset, etc.