> Stuff like integrations that don't seem to really serve any purpose other than to say they are integrated.
I don't think integrations are the example you think it is. The ones I tried work well and make it trivial to setup features that would otherwise feel like papercuts. I'm talking about things like being able to handle gitlab events without having to manage anything or provide your own event-handling infrastructure. If you have web hooks you need invoke or react to, as anyone who runs full CICD and cares about blocked pipelines does, with GitLab you don't need to worry about exposing custom endpoints and write controllers. For many, that is the difference between using notifications or not.
Last time I used it, which was a few years ago now, it felt like Github had caught up and a lot of the Gitlab features were flaky or didn't seem to serve any purpose other than checking a sales tick list. Stuff like integrations that don't seem to really serve any purpose other than to say they are integrated.