I haven’t heard of people getting locked out of iCloud. Losing all your devices nukes E2EE stuff, but that’s not much stuff by default. In particular, photos, device backups and messages are recoverable.

I thought the Apple Store would check your driver’s license or whatever and reset your password, recovering whatever is protected by the escrow keys.

I know Google loses accounts all the time, mostly thanks to “surprise 2FA” combined with zero tech support. I’d believe Apple screws this up too, but I haven’t heard any anecdotes.

Care to share a link to examples?