Sorry, perhaps a poor choice of phrasing. I didn't mean the ESP32 was less capable, just that the boards I've looked at don't physically have the same features like the Uno, like a barrel jack input for power, a button, an onboard LED, breadboard headers, etc.... Heck, some of the ESP32s I've seen on Amazon didn't seem to have a USB connection, so I'm not sure how I'd even program those ones. (I intended to pick up one of the ones with a USB to avoid that). When it comes to the actual chip, yes the ESP32 actually has more features than the ATMega in my Uno.
With the ESP, I'll have to do a little more hands work, like figuring out how I want to get power to it, soldering directly to the GPIO pads instead of leveraging the breadboard style headers on the UNO, etc. All stuff I'd probably want to do anyways for an actual install vs a prototype, but still, stuff I have to work out how to do vs just using the Uno.