Beside Lemmy 0.18.0 linking primarily to your own instance’s mirror of the community from other instance, there is also a browser addon trying to solve this issue if you ever end up on a wrong instance. (If you do not find the button to redirect to your instance, try refreshing the page.)
I would encourage you to try wefwef, too. If only to complete the collection of Lemmy apps you have experimented with. Mostly because wefwef offers a different UI to all other Lemmy apps, in my opinion. Some might like it, some might not, but it is nice to know what options there are.
But I agree with you. I do not use Liftoff even though I have it installed, but Lemmur was always beautiful and fun to work with in the past. Have fun ;)
Fun fact: When starting Liftoff, you can see an image of a lemmur. That was the original logo of the Lemmur app.