I think part of it is that LATERAL JOINs were (are, for folks still on <12, which is probably a lot of them) able to be run when needed rather than having to be

I think part of it is that LATERAL JOINs were (are, for folks still on <12, which is probably a lot of them) able to be run when needed rather than having to be completely materialized upstream. Now that CTEs don't have to be materialized, this is less interesting. Beyond that, LATERAL JOINs are really nice way to write out a subquery without a ton of nesting, as shown at https://ddrscott.github.io/blog/2017/what-the-sql-lateral/ https://ddrscott.github.io/blog/2017/what-the-sql-lateral/. (LATERAL can be applied to things in FROM! Especially useful given some set-returning functions can only be used in FROM.) I think even though you can do most of these things using subqueries or CTEs, LATERAL makes it ergonomic to do them. I'm hoping someone a little more knowledgable than I replies to this comment with some more details, as I know my knowledge on this particular subject is spotty.