If we’re talking about class-based components then I agree with you. React doesn’t do much… maybe some performance benefits, and maybe you can avoid some complex DOM manipulation here and there, but with the extra abstraction required that all might be a wash.

But with functional components I think React gives you something substantially more debuggable than an object instance with random method calls that manipulate the DOM.

React functional components (with hooks) mandate a very specific control flow that probably halves the debugging surface for any given bug, saving time.

You do have to exercise restraint when incorporating third party libraries, but if you can do that it can be a very rapid development environment.