Installing packages from source is fine, but then you have to maintain all security updates and patches from upstream, and you need full control over where all the files are populated on your filesystem. This is a lot of administration overhead. It "works", but it's also work. I rarely install software outside of the APT system, for this very reason.

Yeah, if apt has the versions you need it's definitely first choice. But for a lot of things it lags too much, and that's where this is useful.

True, but for your primary tech stack you should be on top of that anyway, and the benefit is you can install the full updated version beside the old version, swap over to the updated version with a command, test your app, and if there are any regressions, roll back to the old version with a command.

Anything not part of your primary stack, sure use the repo.