Sure. USB's port has a little tab inside, I think its like 0.6mm. Because they put a TON of pins on this little tab (24 pins!) the tab itself in almost all cases has to be plastic or non-metal.

Lighting by contrast tends to have a metal tab which is relatively beefy at 1.5mm. This is much stronger materials and dimensions wise AND is on a part (the cable) that is pretty easily replaceable. So that's a win win win.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)#/media/F...

Despite this, the port itself is SMALLER for lighting. So add another win?

Finally with lightning the interface is simple, it's one piece inside another and the tolerances seem really good / there is an little indent to help seat a lightning cable. With UCB-C you have a shall going around a tab, so loading is onto the interior surface with flexing, then a shall around that, so tab -> surrounded by cable shell -> surrounded by port shell. In my experience this just results in a fair bit of slop in accumulated tolerance issues.