Honestly, I think the problem with the banning there is more a result of wanting to stay in the App Store than a failure of labelers. Even then, users are only banned from the Bluesky PDS, so they could always join another or spin up their own. The blocklists there are a far worse feature than the labelers, which actually work pretty well for basic things.

I'm pretty sure they ban you from the AppView, not only from the PDS. It would make no sense otherwise and they have said so. No one is guaranteed any right to stay in their AppView, as evidenced by the amount of checks and limits they put on the front door. The reasons for each specific ban do not matter. As long as you find a centralized point there will be always many "reasons": app stores, governments, advertisers, blackmailers, personal quibbles from moderators, whatever. Labelers can work well for small things, I agree, but I think the Bluesky designers misjudged their efficacy against the big things.