venv + requirements.txt is simple and works. Why are people so obsessed with replacing this simple toolset/process with poorly maintained tools like Poetry/PyEnv?

Why do you think those tools are poorly maintained? How do you handle locking in specific versions of libraries and keeping those properly maintained?

With pip-tools.

https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools

And you can still use standard setup.cuff and pip install -e unlike Poetry. Also, much faster.