Not every addon/tool for the k8s ecosystem is worth it. I also don't bother with the ever-growing list of service meshes... not enough value to me for the overhead.
K8s is definitely the simpler alternative for me but there is still a lot of essential complexity in k8s due to the nature of the problems it's trying to solve. Mostly I like building on top of a solid foundation of standardized k8s API objects (pods, services, volumes, etc).
Tldr; Bring in only the add-ons and tools you really need so you don't add more complexity than necessary. Don't get swept up in the hype and marketing from other devs and cloud vendors.
Really when looking at tools in the k8s ecosystem, it's better to approach it as you would importing a new library into your application. Most decent devs wouldn't blindly import a new lib so that they can copy/paste a single line of code they found online for a business critical function, and k8s tools should be no different. We must think about what value does a given tool bring, and is it worth the cost of learning/maintenance? Sometimes the answer is a resounding "yes", but too often the question isn't even asked.
Also, I don't much like Go's templating syntax.