So, I've played AL on a weekly basis for about the last two years, give or take, and DMed for the last year. Mostly the hardcover campaigns, as I seldom have time on the weekends to make it out for my area's events for the one-shot adventures. I used to have a lot more problems with it than I do now, mostly as a matter of adjusting from a very free-wheeling college gaming group to a group where there are far more rules and regulations than I'm used to. Some of them I find actually useful, if only because we're playing with a bunch of random people who don't know each other, that I would be more comfortable removing in a group of friends (for example, the restrictions on evil alignments - I don't need chaotic evil randos at my table, but I can trust some of my friends to play it well).
The only restriction that really still chafes me is giving out magic items within the story that there are no certs for. I've had players save up gold for a magic weapon and then realize they couldn't take it to any other table in our area because they wouldn't have a cert, for example. And, with Volo's guide, the restriction on flying races, which is only moderately vexing. I understand why these rules are in place, but understanding doesn't mean I have to like it. I have one or two players at my regular table who point out if something I'm about to do as a DM is not AL-legal, and for the most part, my players don't have a problem with me going ahead with it anyway. I enjoy the stories as written, and I don't feel much need to go off-track with them, and when we do, there's always ways to bring it back to the core story beats.
My bigger problem, which is almost certainly tied to my specific region (and my region seems to be something of a rare thing based on reading this thread), is that AL has to some extent taken over all other D&D play. My area is blessed with quite a few friendly local game stores, many of which run multiple tables of AL every week (sometimes multiple times a week). We have a lot of very active participants, which is awesome (I'm guaranteed a full table when I show up to run every week, basically). They're enthusiastic and knowledgeable and I'm glad they get more from the AL experience than I do. But if you try to put together any kind of non-AL D&D event, things kind of fall apart. You'll get a little bit of interest, but someone will ask "Is this AL-legal? Can I bring my AL character?" and you reply that it's homebrew, you will get an alarmingly high number of people who say "Sorry, I only play AL these days". Like I said, I'm glad that they enjoy it so much, but as someone who writes and sells adventures on the DM's Guild, it can be really discouraging to know that 1) you can't get playtesters for this, 2) your friends won't ever play your stuff even if they buy it because it's not AL-legal.
Basically, AL meets my needs to regularity and consistency (I've showed up to DM nearly every Tuesday night for over a year and I've only once not had enough players to run a game (and then we ran a game anyway)). It's easy to run, since the pre-written campaigns require next to no prep work compared to a homebrew. And I've made a lot of really wonderful, fun friends through AL. But for other things - homebrew games, my own stories, etc - I end up turning more to other game systems (which also have very active local followings). Savage Worlds, FATE, and Pathfinder all have active regular games that scratch my itch for homebrew, but I'd love to be able to do more of that with D&D, because I LOVE D&D 5e as a system.