I’ll preface this by admitting I misspoke. Lightning did develop into a better technology once the power delivery got better and I forgot they desperately needed the slightly higher PD for the 4th gen iPad. I also completely forgot about the logical data layers afforded by the extra pins because it’s such a strange niche to need direct output for your phone rather than just moving the files to a computer. However, this still doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t just switch to USB-C when it was released and proven to serve all these functions, and I take issue with every other point you made.

More durable ports

I would love conclusive, hard data on this but this has been spread everywhere and it’s completely anecdotal. I’ve seen the “40K to 10K” comparisons but the 40K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the lightning port while the 10K mating cycles minimum is attributed to the micro usb/usb-c cable.

substantial advantages

Reversible connector

Really?

Many existing micro USB cables are terrible, i.e., they only support charging (no data) or they only support charging at 2.5W

Apple’s very own branded lightning cables are terrible quality. I don’t see why you wouldn’t hold a first-party manufacturer accountable for their low quality standard and then turn around and point to a low standard for third-party manufacturers.