Because while Nginx always has access to .well-known, thing that validates on issuer side might not. I use DNS challenge to issue certificates for domains that resolve to IPs in my overlay network.
The issue is that supporting dns-01 is just supporting dns-01 it's providing a common interface to interact with different providers that implement dns-01.
dns-01 is just a challenge; which api or dns update system should nginx support then? Some API, AFXR, or UPDATE?
I think this is kinda the OPs point, nginx an http server, why should it be messing with dns? There are plenty of other acme clients to do this with ease
I mean, you just repeated my explanation why supporting dns-01 in nginx isn't straightforward has http-01. I've explained why dns-01 challenge is still useful and might be required for some users.