For generic CRUD type applications like phpMyAdmin, Adminer, etc, these functions are okay.
For some of the cases in FA where we predominantly have PHP based threshold WHERE conditions when a strange set of records with or without primary keys and/or structured generic JOINs needs to be selected or updated/manipulated we will end up making several atomized queries if we use the functions you suggest.
Also do not land up double db_escaping values!
However, most of the atomic changes can be accommodated using your functions and in the extreme, a SOAP API can be integrated into FA to perform such tasks generically other than for the exceptions in the light of optimization.
FluentPDO is one such PHP Library.
WordPress and Joomla have their own.
Time saving DB Functions
10 Useful PHP DB Functions | MySQLi variants
Which of your repositories has your functions.php file?