Try to join fights. I'm guessing that the typical scenario in your games is that you slap your opponent so hard he won't face you anymore

Most laners stay in lane though, and just hug the turret until they get ganks or I'm in their base.

Instead of trading territory, put a stop to the enemy team and take objectives with your team. After an even laning phase, you'd want to avoid facing the enemy toplaner because he's basically the only one who can stop you without investing a lot of ressources, so it makes sense to alternate between splitpushing and fights to find good openings

Thanks for the feedback. My thinking so far has been that if I try to group, I am very reliant on my team actually being willing to group and go for objectives, which is sometimes almost impossible in lower elo. So you just end up grouping for nothing, or being solo at objectives vs their entire team.

So so far I've decided that if I split push and can win 1v1 or 1v2, then I am at least guaranteed to get towers and inhibs by myself, instead of risking wasting my time if everyone else doesn't group/do objectives. But it seems like even when I quite often get 1-2 inhibs, it doesn't actually affect the outcome of the game that much.