You mean the Power BI functionality (PowerQuery, PowerPivot, etc...)? Yeah, it's useful, but I'd suggest VLOOKUPs are more beginner-friendly and better for quick data manipulation.
That said, if you want to go from an Excel beginner to an intermediate user, then the Power BI functionality is definitely worth exploring.
It's also worth knowing how to work with Excel tables, which can help with making formulas more robust. However, all of this putting the cart before the horse, VLOOKUPs are too useful to skip over, and are a fundamental part of data manipulation with Excel formulas. A grounding in Excel formulas is useful before moving on to the fancier stuff.
I find INDEX and MATCH to be more useful / flexible than VLOOKUP. The only issue is a lot of people get freaked out when they see a INDEX / MATCH statement and, instead of trying to learn what it does, claim that your model is wizardry and don't feel comfortable using it without your supervision.
Combining INDEX and MATCH is more versatile than VLOOKUP as you can do things like have the result you return to the left of the value you're looking up. However, VLOOKUP / HLOOKUP are simpler to understand when starting out, and that's a good thing when you're trying to build confidence in using Excel.
That said, if you want to go from an Excel beginner to an intermediate user, then the Power BI functionality is definitely worth exploring.
It's also worth knowing how to work with Excel tables, which can help with making formulas more robust. However, all of this putting the cart before the horse, VLOOKUPs are too useful to skip over, and are a fundamental part of data manipulation with Excel formulas. A grounding in Excel formulas is useful before moving on to the fancier stuff.