It doesn't have to be this way though. What you're describing is a result of Apple intentionally prioritizing native over web apps to maintain control of their lucrative walled garden.

There’s no way within web standards to match iOS native api UX. Even on Android where you have chrome as the mobile browser you can’t match it.

Even if you could ship chrome renderer on iOS you won’t be able to make a mobile web app feel as good as an iOS app. The little details, animations, and microinteractions that come with native apps are better, plus there are other less visiual capabilities like background uploads and prefetching. The moment you need something like an in app camera, a native app is going to be so much better.

there are thousands of apps that do not require to be "great native apps". If only Apple invested more on mobile Safari we could have "almost great" web apps and be out of their mafia ecosystem.

I am old enough to remember the days of Internet Explorer, I can tell you that it was not fun. It is a blessing that we can at least deliver some pretty decent web apps today, and we should keep pushing for it.