It's definitely not meant to be used as a key-value database and I agree it's a terrible tool for that - although that capability can be useful in certain situations.

That said, it's actually meant to deploy software to computers. It's actually not bad at all at that. I see nothing in your arguments that show why it's a terrible tool for this job. That said, this is mostly personal opinion anyway. You say using ansible/salt/etc is better for this job. It might be, depending on many factors. It's not great either though. I imagine Kubernetes is solving real problems for those who are using it in this kind of context.

Note that I'm not defending it, I just don't see why it would be so bad.