This actually makes it much more sensible: it's an escape spell.
Yeah. Now, is the 5e version under-powered
for 6th level?
Well, the upgrade Gary Gygax gave it between 1975 (Supplement I) and 1978 (PHB) indicates he thought so even back then. And the decline in megadungeons with subtly sloping corridors, rotating rooms, teleport squares, shifting walls, mazes, duplicate map sections, and similar "get the party lost" tricks since the 1980s is then a secondary decline in utility of the original "find the way out" function. And of course 5e's 5th-level spell
teleportation circle can not just find the way out, but get you all the way out (barring various teleport-blocking shenanigans).
So if someone wanted to drop its level from 6th, I'd nod along. The
teleportation circle comparison suggests a maximum level of 4th for the spell as written, to me. Similarly, if they wanted to add back the 1st-through-3.5 functionality (and just accepted that their game world never truly has a
lost city from the perspective of clerics able to cast 6th-level spells), that works, too.
One can quite understand how the 5e writers wound up where they ended up (effectively the 0th edition function, and the every-previous-edition level), without agreeing that the destination they reached was the right one.