I completely understand where you are coming form and use both and I'll elaborate. We always have a hard keypad for every audio zone and for lighting at the main entry's and master suite. A dedicated handheld hardbutton control for every Video Zone. 

These are the fail safes that not only work every time but don't require you to necessarily look at what you are doing, making TV watching much brainless as you often what it to be. 

The Keypads allow simple and quick on/off, volume and scenes like All AV and Lighting OFF, all lighting OFF, Home, etc. 

If you are using Sonos as a source on a distributed audio system, this works because you can still have the keypads for quick on/off and volume. Only pulling out the Sonos control for content selection.

We do this now, but we use the Autonomic Control server so that instead of pulling up the Sonos app, the user just goes to crestron and now they can still adjust volume, lights, party modes, etc within the one app. 

The Autonomics Piece is built for flexibility and the way I understand the control module works allows for new features without breaking the control module. For example when they added support for Spotify. So this is my preference over Sonos as the media server. 

I do however use my TiVo IOS app all the time for managing my recordings and scheduling recordings. It is faster than doing it with the on screen UI and just works very well. That said, I HATE using it for just watching TV.

Things like CCTV I suggest the native IOS app, but if the video can be embedded, then do it for convenience of quick viewing when it Crestron App or Touch Panel.