The only benefits I can see of "Apps", are the developer get's access to private information they really don't need.
Yeah, they get to be on the "App Store". But the "App Store" is a totally unnecessary concept introduced by Apple/Google so they could scrape a huge percentage in sales.
Web browsers have good (not perfect) sandboxing, costs no fees to "submit" and are accessible to everyone on every phone.
I don’t understand people who use apps for this. It is such a pain.
I do most things on my desktop for the reasons you say but on a phone multiple tabs etc is a pain.
Their websites do (although even on new phones you are at a greater risc of a tab being purged and needing a reload, but still you can multi tab on the mobile website)