A hardware keyboard was essential because the alternative was not an option.

As someone who used to jailbreak, I've definitely found tools in the past in the jailbreak store that were lovely, and a large chunk of those have now wound up in iOS by default too.

I've also since determined that the tradeoff (less security, more features) isn't one I'm still happy to make anymore, so have given up and accepted that I can do what Apple permits, and that's it.

It's not the ideal solution, but the ideal solution doesn't currently exist, and this is the least-bad in my view of the tradeoffs involved.