This may be familiarity bias, but I often find `kubectl` and related tools like `k9s` more ergonomic than `systemctl`/`journalctl`, even for managing simple single-replica processes that are bound to the host network.
Systemd seems to be moving in that direction, the features are coming together to actually enable this.
Though imagining the unholy existence of an init system who's only job is to spin up containers, that can contain other inits, OS images, or whatever ..... turtles all the way down.