Given the diversity of FE it’s quite likely for a take home project to hit one of those criteria.
Depending on the position they may been testing specifically to filter people out who are using a tool for the first time. If I'm hiring a Senior Flutter Developer then it better not be their first time using Flutter.
If you are a senior developer and haven't seen half a dozen frameworks, tool sets, or languages under your belt. What value are you in 2 years when we shift gears
1. Write it all yourself. Express those opinions as clearly and bug free as you can. Try to get it all in as much as you can and give up on finishing all the features in the spec. Definitely give up on the UI looking nice -- despite what anyone says, default HTML is not pretty.
2. Use OSS libraries. Are you actively up to date on OSS libraries handling these things? If you're a working React professional, you probably are not, because you're using whatever system your company uses. Do those OSS libraries properly express what you think is good code? And what does it say about you to use those OSS libraries? Do you look like someone who actually understands React and understands those tradeoffs, or do you look like the kind of person that creates the type of React app that HN is always complaining about, one with a billion dependencies?
Sorry if I sound ranty. It's not directed at you. I've just been dealing with a lot of these this week.