GitLab should, frankly, focus on performance/ux/bug-fix releases every other release. And probably for the next 2-3 releases to get some of the warts under control. This constant push for project management features, frankly, is at the expense of the core product. I'd rather use a combination of GitHub and JIRA over Gitlab.
Gitea has been very close to core Github Features IMO and Gogs (the original fork) has some neat other features separate from Github.
There is also Bitbucket which does integrate neatly into JIRA in my experience.
There is a lot of choice, Gitlab is great if you need a "everything in one box" solution for every problem or demand you might encounter during development.
Other Git-Webapps solve other problems or problem spaces.