That’s not what they referred to. That’s still loading the built in version of WebKit. On Android for example I can download Firefox and Chrome and they run on their own rendering engines.
True, but that's more of a problem with Safari than WebKit. Here's Gmail's desktop interface zoomed way out in an iPad sidebar using iCab's desktop mode: https://i.imgur.com/Qr56fYx.png
You can force it to always allow zooming, block App Store links, spoof other user agents (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera, Googlebot, etc), download and upload files, and do all sorts of other stuff that Safari doesn't support.
User interface is admittedly more crowded so it's not my daily driver, but it's handy to keep around.
It has view as desktop, it doesn't have alternatives to webkit.