The thing is, that's exactly the sort of gameplay I think is interesting and fun in these games. Coming up with novel solutions to novel problems (ideally particularly efficient solutions) is kind of the whole game. Skill-usage, especially skills in a system without pre-specified tasks/DCs, is rarely interesting as a gameplay decision. You're mostly just reacting to circumstances, and rolling to see if the obstacle goes away.
What is the decision making involved in a rogue picking a lock? You can zoom out far enough to make it a strategic choice, picking a particular route of entry based on your odds of succeeding at lockpicking or you can get some juice out of time pressure, but neither of those is really any different than deploying a limited resource like spells. Spells do specific, incontrovertible things, so you can try to plan and manipulate the situation around making those effects more useful, and they're a limited resource so picking which ones to bring and when to use them is another choice.
I'm really resistant to calls to run everything through skills, or to more sharply limit spells to force skills to come into play more, precisely because skills aren't generally as fun or interesting to use. Frankly, using low-level spells to solve problems is a better game than occasionally rolling skill checks. Far better to give every class access to that gameplay.
