A vpn of some sort will always be more secure and safer. Exposing it to the internet is a convenience that you have to weigh the benefits of against the reduced security. If you don’t need the convenience then don’t worry about the extra complexity it brings.
The main benefit I see for a RP is the convenience of friends or family to just have a public facing url without having to install anything to make use of something I’m hosting.
Some people just like having a valid ssl cert or a host name to visit instead of an IP. These can be accomplished in other ways but a RP can make it easier.
In my use case I use a RP with authelia to require a password to some services, then maxmind geo filtering to limit where people can access from, and for some services the RP is set to only allow traffic from inside my network.