With a stable operator it's theoretically similar, but it is not the same, by any stretch, if only because I guarantee your incident rate will be higher when performing changes to the database, all other factors being similar. You now are also exposed to a bunch of other changes, the shenanigans of k8s networking, a missing daemonset, someone was tweaking istio that messed everything...
The argument of "don't run it on k8s" isn't because you can't run it physically. It's because all those other things are going to increase your failure rate, and those failures will be way more complex to solve and so your time to recovery will also go up.
You'll have to deal with this complexity already for the things that Kubernetes is going to give you actual benefits on, doing databases should be at the bottom of that list. Use your complexity budget wisely. If you're already at the bottom of the list, you look at your team and you go "we have extra capacity and are very confortable with the complexity of our current incidents", go ahead, likely it is the right time for you if you like adventure.