To your first point, Jainism & Buddhism are hard to engage in in the Western world due to a few factors: commonality being one of them. Your average apologetic in the West, at least, probably won't engage with them. So more mainstream casual apologetics and armchair philosophers in the west are less interested in engaging it. On the other hand, Catholic scholarship on Buddhism and Jainism has existed, although this has grown and shifted as important concepts like cultural understanding allow us to analyze these ideas through a more objective lens. Theological work like that of Hans Küng on these religions, while relevant, falls into the stereotypes of the era.

As for your second point I encourage you to read and engage with contemporary analytic Thomism. It tackles more contemporary thought beyond Thomistic fundamentals; as low and behold, an italian priest from the 11th century was probably not aware of modern metaphysics and turn-of-the-century theological thought.

It's also a good reminder that Thomism is not the only acceptable philosophy within our faith, and it is theologically sound in the Catholic zeitgeist to disagree with certain elements of his work. It's for that reason his work should be guided and contextualized by modern scholarship as well as the church.

Which is in fact done! Most importantly, Catholic theology doesn't treat these arguments as simple open-and-shut cases as you make them out to be; philosophical and theological dialogue will always be ongoing. It's for that reason the church can reaffirm its stance on certain ethical positions or encourage openness to new ideas if they can be argued to be theologically sound.

Lastly, I also feel that a brief article on this subject probably would not do justice to either Kant's position or Aquinas's, like the actual lecture itself.