I have not really had any issues with ads using uBlock Origin Lite. It's like the complainers live in an alternate reality or just listened to some influencer and never actually checked.

I do miss the rules that let me remove stuff based like CSS like selectors. The strange thing is, even though uBlock Origin Lite doesn't support that feature it's still totally possible to make an extension that does that. Maybe the specific thing uBlock Origin was doing is not possible but making an extension that follows rules and hides/deletes elements with different rules per site is still fully possible under manifest v3