The simplest answer is that "named functions" and "lambdas" are mutually exclusive, since a simple definition of a lambda is an "anonymous function," or one tha

The simplest answer is that "named functions" and "lambdas" are mutually exclusive, since a simple definition of a lambda is an "anonymous function," or one that doesn't have a name. That's all both practically and technically correct but I call it the "simple" answer because it kind of misses the point that named functions and lambdas are used in different ways. One articulation would be that named functions serve primarily as a means of reuse (to avoid repeatedly writing out the same thing) while lambdas serve primarily as a mean of containment (both in terms of scope and to package up a bit of logic in a form that can easily be passed). This is all a bit more complicated in the spreadsheet world because spreadsheets have historically maintained a separation between "the document" and "extra code." In Excel, this is the separation between the spreadsheet itself and VBScript macros which might be packaged with it. In Google Sheets, it is the separation between the spreadsheet itself and AppScript. In Excel, it is possible to implement functions in the sheet by use of the LAMBDA function in a cell. Amusingly, because of Excel's general concept of named cells, these lambdas can actually have names if you want, and can be called by those names. This allows easy implementation of e.g. recursive logic within the sheet, something that was not historically possible without the use of VBScript. Google Sheets still doesn't have that capability, and the functions you mention are an AppScript feature that can be called from within the sheet. You will notice in reading this that part of the confusion is that the difference between a conventional "programming language" and the spreadsheet environment means that the terms "function" and "lambda" have somewhat different meanings in spreadsheets than in a more general-purpose programming language.