They only removed it completely in a jurisdiction where they were being told that they had to open all of their internal APIs around web applications to all comers if they were going to use those APIs in their own applications. They claimed (whether you believe them or not) that doing so would open risks they didn’t want to take and so they removed it in that jurisdiction.

If this was some grand plan to stop the few hundred PWAs out there entirely, one would think they would have removed the PWA functionality in other less hostile jurisdictions where no law makers were looking to force a change. I could absolutely believe that the security risks were overblown, but if the assertion is Apple is trying to suppress PWAs, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it given they could just turn it off in the US and no one would blink an eye.