Distros like Ubuntu don't aim to always keep up to date. The value in them is that they're sufficiently recent but updated infrequently enough that they don't regularly break after an update, and support can be provided.

You're supposed to separately manage the software you care about. e.g. there's a nodejs for people who don't exploit it in their daily use except as dependencies to other software, but if you use it regularly you should manage your own nodejs binaries.