It's still a separate issue though; you can use Google Play Services on an old version of stock Android, an old major version of Lineage, or on a new version of Lineage, or you can decide to run an old major version of Lineage or a new version of Lineage without it. All of these except the first should fix the "vendor removing features from Android" problem.

MicroG is an option, it's an open source implementation of a good portion of play services, though not everything "just works". But for the bare minimum like functional push notifications, location services, etc it's not half bad. There exists a fork[1] of lineage with MicroG installed from the get-go, otherwise installing it can be a little painful.

[1] - https://lineage.microg.org/

Half, really? I don't run them and haven't had issues with apps not working in recent memory, though I try to stick to F-Droid stuff almost entirely. A lot of the time you can use your mobile browser instead of some company's app.