I've done both React Native / Cordova apps, and native iOS apps. To be honest, in terms of development, they both felt the same to me (ignoring language), as in, I was able to build both apps roughly at the same speed. However with one, I also had an Android app with minimal efforts, with the other, I had to start from scratch again.

I agree with you on the tool set tho, I also felt quite uncomfortable not knowing how exactly React Native was doing all the things to make it work for Android / iOS, and sometimes it was extremely difficult to access native functionality.

At the end of the day, I don't know what the correct use case is, I see advantages to both.