It is like asking for something between vanilla JS and React. Or something between zipping your src folder and git.
The problem is, while this is in theory good, the weight of knowledge and support for React (and git) make it worth putting up with a bit more complexity. That support covers: Stackoverflow, Colleagues, New Hires, Cloud Support of these things (Vercel for example using both Github and React!)
You learn the tool, then you are set for 10+ years, probably, in both cases.
In the Kubernetes case, the killer thing is it very easy to set up a cluster on cloud platforms. I am not so sure about say Docker compose or the other ones. I am in the Azure world and Azure dropped support for direct container running, and now you need to use k8s if you want something cloud managed. (As far as I know).
What about something that does the subset of what K8s does that is the simple bit and covers most use-cases outside of complex clusters?
I get the strong sense people are just misusing it for the wrong types of task. I've seen this happen countless times in tech. Development by CV.