The .38/.357 has its place.
Its fun and shoots a revolver round.
It has limitations, once you know what those limitations are, just dont go beyond them.
You want a flat shooting 300 yd lever gun then buy a Henry Long Ranger in .223 Remington.
I have had one or more 357 lever Guns for forty years, so I am pretty familiar with their limitations. I have killed well over 100 deer antelope and elk and never took a 357 deer hunting. That said, I only hunt big deer, no does or small bucks at all. I know people who use them for deer and I guess if you shoot deer trained to come to feeders where your shots are 20-30 yards they would be fine, that is not hunting to me, so my shots are seldom close. The deer I killed last year was 282 yards.
I will not use anything less than a 243 on big deer .. So I do not use the 357 for that. Mostly as a camp and truck gun with an occasional shot at a coyote. Some years fall turkey hunting allows rifles and I have taken it for that season. Most folks just use 38 wad cutters for the turkeys. But 22 mag works just as well.
The Henry Lone Ranger is just a clone of the Browning lever gun. It only has a 20 inch barrel and all my distance shooting guns like my 223 , 257 Wby, 30-06 , and 300h Wby ave 22-26 inch tubes, so that little Lone Ranger does not appeal to me. Mostly I just do not care for that rack and pinion lever action design. I just like the historical look and feel. That Lone Ranger is $1200 by the way.
You make a good point about the limitations of the 357 lever gun. Probably just for fun more than anything else but also useful for defense if need be or dispatching bad critters. We have had a couple people killed by dog packs and a dozen injured in my area. While any handgun would do,that 800-1000 foot pounds out of the lever gun would do it quick. I have ARs Including a 300 Blk pistol, but they are not as fun to carry around as a lever gun. And nobody gets excited when they see a lever gun.. Anyway, they fill a need at my house. Oh did I mention I have grand kids? They like lever Guns...