You will note that I did not use the word "lazy." I referred to it as bad design, because that's exactly what it is, and I explained why it is bad, without simply declaring it so.
Game design is a technology and a technique. As a result, wholly apart from the aesthetic interests, it can be evaluated on at least two different measures:
(a) Does the design achieve the play-goals for which it was designed? AKA: Does the system do the thing it tells you it's supposed to do?
(b) Does the design make thrifty and/or wise use of the tools it employs? AKA: Are the parts executed well, regardless of whether they do what they're supposed to do?
Okay, cook on that...
Shoehorning the vast, vast majority of supernatural things into spells--for God's sake, they tried to make WARLOCK PACTS into spells!!!--fails on both of these measures. In blindly shoving everything into a single box allegedly with the goal of making the system easier to approach, it actually makes the system harder to approach, because now, new players need to have reasonably deep knowledge of the spells system in order to make effective characters in the VAST majority of situations. Stuffing so many things into one ill-fitting basket does not make them easier to learn, particularly given how ludicrously diverse "spells" are as a category.
I think there's some nuance here that you're missing. 4e shoved nearly everything into a spells (er, POWERS) category. Much more than 5e does! And for a similar reason to the reason for spell-ifying things: there's benefits to a standardized approach that heavily benefit your point (b) above. There's fewer sub-systems to learn, fewer exceptions to the general rule. One fairly consistent system is easier to learn than a scattered bundle of loosely related systems, even if it's reasonably complex (which spellcasting and 4e powers both are, I'd say)
I agree in principle that one-size-fits-all is not a great road to travel down, and I think the homogeneity and narrative emptiness of 4e powers shows what happens as you near an end of that curve. I don't want 5e to go in that direction. But I don't think it's clearly bad design in every case. There's a case for spell-ifying mechanics that needs to be evaluated more on a case by case basis than on a blanket condemnation of turning things into spells. If you're close to being a spell already, maybe we gain a lot of efficiency and understanding by making you into a spell. D&D has spells, you're not going to be able to play D&D and ignore the spellcating mechanic entirely, any more than you're going to be able to avoid rolling a die and adding modifiers, and I think that's OK in principle. It's not too much to expect most players to grok the mechanics for spellcasting, even if they don't engage with them much. Even your Champion Fighters might pick up a magic shield that casts a spell.
And as for "thrift," the only thrift is in slimming down every chapter that isn't the spells chapter...which, by the way, the chapters dedicated to spells (how they work, and then the list thereof) are the lion's share of the PHB. It's neither thrifty nor wise, doubly so when (at least prior to the last couple years) they didn't even print creatures with the text of the spells they know, just the names. Cue continuous book-flipping, or digital lookup (or, I guess, pre-printed text the DM had to prepare for herself), just to run a single combat.
The 2024 edition is evidently taking steps to address that by giving monsters more specific actions and relying less on the Spellcasting trait and system knowledge. It seems like they see the book flipping and lookup and see it as an issue and are taking steps in monster design to address it. I think this is broadly a good thing.
I don't think the quantity of spells is much of a damning thing, any more than 4e's profound mass of powers was much of a damning thing. I do like that 5e tends to not make a unique spell or ability for EVERYTHING, which enables some degree of knowledge to cross between game functions. If I have access to
fireball as a sorcerer or as a wizard or from a necklace of fireballs, I don't need to learn a new slightly different version of
fireball for each. But spell-ifying things that are not spells eats away at that.
As both an exercise in the technology of designing games, and as a demonstration of game design technique, the absolute kindest thing you can say about 5e is that it is a hot mess, and the fact that they try to shove nearly everything into "spells" is one of the greater errors the design team has committed to.
I am deeply skeptical of this kind of critique of 5e as a hot mess or as bad design, a critique of
technique. Design has a goal and a reason, and understanding it in context is so much more valuable than dismissing it as bad. Even most of the deep jank of some 1e and 2e choices have a way they make sense, a way to appreciate what people were thinking at the time, and a way to realize that "improvements" can also leave behind some valuable design elements. Dismissing the work of dozens of very good and very thoughtful professional game designers working in one of the most demanding environments possible in this little industry on the TTRPG played by the most people in the world as "bad design" feels exceptionally shallow and not a little elitist. There absolutely can be bad design, even in 5e, but most of the time the reality is more complex than this simple dismissive label.
I don't think turning everything into spells is intrinsically bad design (it certainly makes them easier to remember and reinforces knowledge of an important subsystem), but I do think that the experience of playing a game where every action shares that mechanic feels repetitive, without meaningful choice or characterization. The 2024 edition doesn't seem like it will be as bad as 4e in that regard, but given the appeal to the designer of this design trend, it's definitely worth calling out areas where isn't satisfying.
For all of those times when we 'politely' want to say something, but can't speak in Thieves' Cant. 
