So not just k8s alone, k8s + kustomize, no Helm charts, right?
or can you do k8s + Helm, no kustomize?
or can you do kustomize to deploy Helm charts which abstracts away and translates to underlying k8s API calls/generated YAML?
I forgot to mention the CD tools we have, e.g. Flux or ArgoCD. Use customize to render a "final" yaml for your env/version/whatever and throw it at Flux/Argo (e.g. using GitOps) and be happy. That's imho the Kubernetes way of life.
although i think kustomize wouldn't make a nicer picture than ansible, but push vs pull .. i prefer pull
If helm is how some application is distributed we just render the template with our values file and store that in git, even though argocd can also use helm charts. We'd just prefer to see the diff in git instead of argocd so the deployment is still automated.