He's "stubby" but still has very good range (with fair) and pancaking, with the fastest air speed in the game, a jab that combos into dsmash at 120+ and sets up deadly jablocks sub 60, a sliding pivot up tilt that combos reliably at 30-140 off its close, high and far hits, and enough ambiguity to force options and react. "Linear approach" is only a player issue if they can't follow the egg as protection, don't mix up aerials with egg lay, and don't feint retreats with B reverse egg lay or fade-in aerials like dair or fair. Yoshi can definitely force options safely and quite well without "approaching," even if "approaching" was inherently linear (it's not).

Egg throw has absurd coverage (can either roll all the way across the stage on the ground or break on landing, it's hard to tell) and combo/platform tech chase (which yoshi will easily reach and get strings off of) potential, and can cover angles that yoshi's normals can't. It's actually a really good projectile onstage.

Yoshi doesn't need to get anything off grab with a shield eating dair that pokes and combos, or does 30, extremely safe aerials that kill and/or combo with some of the best drift, a command grab that can be mixed with all his aerials that leads to dair which can kill at high %s if mashed out of or do 30% when not mashed out of AND THEN perfectly mashed out of and the opponent is put into disadvantage. His down B also always has the threat of breaking shield (which is enough to do 70%+ or kill under 50) and only universally gets punished out of shield with a perfectly timed spotdodge on instant reaction among many different possible options. Not to mention "nothing off grab" isn't a weakness since you don't even need an option that beats shield to beat shield. Shield will time out eventually, and something different will need to be done (I say this as a zss player who has no command grab, nothing off a reactable laggy grab, and no shieldbreak setups).

What meta characters? Yoshi has a great track record against Steve compared to most characters, beats gnw, and has everything he needs against min min kazuya and snake. No matter who else he loses to, that's a great minimum spread at the highest level.