In the last few months, though, I gave up on Markdown to switch to a more robust format - LaTeX. Before I switched, I didn't know LaTeX at all, but I knew from my reading that it had the features I needed.
It certainly makes for less _noisy_ source files in my opinion, and it also means that you get to take advantage of the fact that, if you want to, you can easily convert your markdown to HTML, with maths using something like mathjax.
This was a bit of a ramble, but I honestly can't say enough nice things about pandoc.
It's worth noting here that I'm writing layout in LaTeX also - like controlling the number of columns, where breaks exist, etc.
Seriously, org has served all my authoring needs for over a decade now. You can export to LaTeX and HTML easily, and now pandoc does a decent job of exporting to other formats. You can embed LaTeX lines in your org document, so you get the full power of LaTeX, without having to write LaTeX for everything. Tables are hellish in LaTeX, and even lists are a pain.
Of course, there is the whole "You have to use Emacs" thing...
And honestly... I enjoy writing LaTeX. The structure just feels really comfortable to me.
Oh, and I try to do all my presentations in it too - it can export to Beamer.
As for Emacs, I know what you mean. I tried it on and off for 10-11 years before I finally stuck to it. In my case, what helped was that vi/vim really was much worse, so it's not like I had a seriously good alternative. I tired of repeatedly switching editors per task (had one for Python, another for LaTeX, etc). I finally one day said "I need to learn a really good editor and stick to it." I bought the Emacs book, spent a whole week reading it, and forced myself to Google a solution whenever I couldn't remember how to do something. I was surprised how quickly I became proficient in it - within a month of use.
(All without learning elisp - I was a "power" Emacs user for 8-9 years before I learned elisp properly).
And then I discovered org mode. While I've encountered people who were proficient Emacs users but left for something else, I haven't found anyone who is an org mode user who switched to something else. I know people who use other editors in general, but still use Emacs just to use org mode.
I'd say RST is suitable for many types of documentation but I'm not convinced that it's suitable for conference/workshop submissions.