But... neither is bash. I am sympathetic to the argument that awk is theoretically superior to bash in almost all ways (and it is of course nearly as available as bash). But... something still makes me reluctant to switch to using it in the cases I write a bash script (which I'm already trying to minimize, as is the OP). I'm not really sure why though.

(Fun-for-mostly-me fact, my very first programming job ever was writing awk. It was a while ago. I certainly don't remember any awk now).