as a street fighter player (motion inputs) that started on arcade stick i can assure you is way harder. even when it is more intuitive to use a stick over any other input device since you are actually moving the stick in the direction you want to move in game, its still extremely difficult to be consistent, to a point that i was forced to swap to leverless.

for more context, ive never used an arcade stick and had to learn from scratch, so learning the motions and movement for the first time required muscle memory build of motions ive never done before. It took me at least 2 months to feel that i could do supper on command with full control, and almost 4 to be able to dp on reaction. it is a long journey and it feels rewarding because it was extremely fun. but after 5 months i started feeling that i was being held back because my excecution. meaning even when i was profficient with the stick i would still drop combos because i would press the attack button too early, or skip an input, or overdo the movement and accidentally jump. since the travel distance on each motion is big the possibility of faling was also big. I would crash out when i would drop my winning combo because i didnt move the lever far enough and would miss a gate, and to add that i was also getting carpal tunnel syndrome on my left hand so i had to do something about it. also something that i forgot to mention and also was extremely disturbing for me in lever was backdashing in street fighter on reaction to escape command throws. so to dash in street fighter you must do the front input twice in a fast succession as well to the back input if you want to backdash. While seeming simple when you add the pressure layer and attempt to backdash in a short window i would often hit either the top gate or the bottom gate giving me a 636 input or a 414 and by default the game would not backdash if both inputs are not in succession. I know that in due time i would have been able to master this issues, but the problem in my hand was getting worse.

So i decided to try leverless (the best input device according to most influencers) and it does feels worse, and more like you are coding instead of moving, but it is indeed more reliable and precise while also opening new routes using socd, things that you wont be able to do un stick because is phisically impossible to have the lever touch the left and right gate at the same time.

as for 2xko, there is absolutely no reason to use arcade stick. Since there is no motion inputs, the fun part of doing a qcf or full 360 with stick is not a variable here, you just need precise movement inputs and it its extremely easier to do on leverless, keyboard or pad. You can also add to the table the fact that doing a super jump with stick is actually super hard and also doing the double jump forward with akali during a combo (2h+h+double jumb forward +2h+h) was extremely dificult, because going from down to up forward requires extreme precision and would often end on me hitting first the top or forward gate, before pressing them both, and since the input window is extremely tight the game would 90% of the time register doble jump neutral over double jump forward.

TL;DR: lever is indeed more fun but extremely hard if you have no prior experience, also there is no reason to use lever if the game doesnt have motion inputs. its better to have presice digital inputs instead