The LSP model could be the best trade off for self sovereign pleb users IMO
A bit of of splicing to be able to quickly change of LSP in case of censoring and it's fine. A middle size LSP or even bigger could be unregulated, kind of like the Samourai coordinator, so no mandantory KYC.

I'm a total noob and have been running a node for 2 years now, it takes time but with tools like RTL, and Thunderhub and others it's totally doable and it's obviously going to continue to improve in the coming years.

Plus you underestimate the improvement that could still come in this field. We are way better now than 3 years ago.
Lightning is maybe not the perfect solution (yet), but it already works well. As a dev you are blinded by the amount of difficulties you encounter but the ratio (results we already achieved in the LN space)/(money spent on the dev) is enormous 

Give it more time