> I know people love to make UIs stateless and functional. But they just aren’t. IMO UIs are fundamentally a bunch of state, graphically represented. So naturally all of the functional frameworks are full of escape hatches.

Functional does not mean no state, just constraining state to inputs and outputs. Breaking that is a choice, and not good design.

Elm, for example, provides all of that with one escape hatch: ports. It is really well-defined and that not fall into any of the impossibilities you mention.