USB-C is also inferior to lightning for laptops, but here we are. It's got this stupid internal tongue on the recepticals that will break if you try and clean the port with an office standard paperclip with any real force.
Hope you don't do anything involving tiny particles like sand or wood or cloth (like is found inside of pocket in the form of lint)!
That "stupid internal tongue" is why USB-C can now carry 160 Gbps, while Lightning can only do 0.45 Gbps. Yes, it kinda sucks for cleaning, but it makes it future-proof.
Lightning is that limited because Apple chooses for it to be, not because of the port. They made a double-sided variant with high speed data before.
The port can't directly drive all the weird miscellaneous pins that USB-C has, but it does have four high speed lanes, the same as USB-C. On a physical level it can reach the same speeds.
Lightning is a more durable design (in terms of plug/unplug cycles), had higher power capacity originally, and was reversible.