Traditional ssh-key auth is simple and reliable, it's not until you have a large, complex and diverse user base that you need something more. That's why the huge fang sites use it. Every org doesn't need to mimic fang.
I don't understand this obsession with enterprise-level security on home networks and hobby projects. If you think it's fun and educational to set up, then you're doing it for fun and education, not security. If you're doing it for security, you're basically setting up anti aircraft guns to do what a drone jammer could do with way less resources spent.
Good analogy.
SSH keys would make managing these few nodes a lot more complex that it is.
I implemented my own SSH certificate authority myself more or less, and while it's overkill for my own homelab-level stuff, I absolutely would never use anything else once I have more than like, 5 people logging into some set of machines. The benefits of centralized SSH access control that you can freely integrate (and pretty easily too, thanks to OpenSSH!) with your existing identity provider is really nice.