I feel you. I also just read through the comments and I think I'm actually a bit more confused.

Just based off of @koob's first comment, is this the way self-custodial LN payments work everywhere else, or is this clunkiness occurring because it's a new implementation for SN?

If it's like this everywhere else, I'd imagine it will be hard to gain widespread adoption. It takes a lot of research to get everything working correctly. That's not such a foreign concept for me, but it can feel very daunting sometimes.