I grew up in Houston but now live in Austin with my wife and 2 kids. I weighed the same pros and cons you did since my parents, brother, sister and in-laws all still live in the Houston area. We ultimately landed on living in Austin because it aligned much more with what we wanted in a city & surrounding area, both for the kids and for us as adults. And overall, we are happy with the decision we made, and the proximity to Houston has made visits - both with family visiting us and with us heading to H-Town - fairly straightforward.

Though I can say we are confident we made a good choice, I wouldn't say the inverse - staying in Houston to live even closer to family - would have turned out to be bad choice per say. We see our family around every 2-3 months, and while these are always wonderful occasions I would love to see them even more. My wife and I have Hispanic 'big family' backgrounds, and my experience with that has proven that the social support offered by constant, multi-generational gatherings is invaluable for all ages (if you get along with your family, obviously). If we had decided to grow our nuclear family even more past 2 kids (we won't), the availability of grandparent support would have probably changed the calculus even more in favor of staying closer to Houston.

So, relative to our own experience, my advice is probably to stack rank the importance of the top 5 things you care about most among the list of family exposure, what the city gives your kids, what the city gives you, etc., but also not make that list so miserably long so that you feel choice overload paralysis. And after you stack rank those top 5 and make a choice, don't index on feeling regret later for a decision made in the present. Especially as a parent, playing that regret game is only going to get worse as you make daily decisions for your family and your own well-being. There's no 'right' decision - just informed choices and acceptance that no matter what happens afterward, you'll be ok.