> Uber/Lyft
Uber has a mobile site at m.uber.com, and of course both would work via Android app emulation as a stopgap.
> whatever social media apps are popular at the time
Facebook and Twitter both have mobile sites, as do various others, and all of those would work via Android app emulation as a stopgap. There are also several native Linux clients for many of those.
> banking apps
Most bank sites (and credit card sites) work fine in a mobile browser. The only feature that commonly doesn't work is check deposit by camera, and there's no good reason for that. But in any case, Android app emulation would cover those for that use case.
> high quality navigation app (a lot of people would never give up either Google Maps or Waze).
Google Maps works perfectly via the web.
> But with things like Amazon moving into groceries
Both Amazon and Prime Now work perfectly via the websites, without needing an app.
To add a few you didn't mention: YouTube has a perfectly functional mobile version; Netflix and Amazon Prime Video should work fine on a mobile browser (insert standard objection that EME is not appropriate for the web); Slack and Discord work via the web; there are several native calendaring apps (though they'll need some mobile UX improvement) as well as web apps.
I absolutely agree that the experience needs some work and polish; that's what I'm hoping to see happen in the next few years. That said, what I'm looking for are things that aren't possible via either HTML5 or Android emulation.
Android emulation would be an interesting stopgap.
What are examples of "key apps" that neither of those would cover?