For decentralization you don't want nodes to be up on a laptop you need consistent uptime to contribute properly to the network. Otherwise it's leeching. Same for the NAT environment, laptop nodes are often using public wifi and such away from home which will have incoming connections blocked. An open p2p port on an always on computer is ideal. In that environment, getting large storage is inexpensive and a minor hindrance.
We don't need every light client running a node, just more non malicious IPv4 addresses running nodes than malicious ones. Monero already has a strong culture of node running since you gain network level privacy via Dandelion++ using your own node. With bitcoin you don't gain much since there's no dandelion stem on bitcoind, though its been proposed in the past.
Node running will never be normie friendly unless it's a dedicated pay and play device. In that case storage doesn't matter, once again, since HDD space is cheap. Upload bandwidth and CPU validation isn't cheap though so that's really the danger imo with scaling.
Also Monero isn't designed for nor is trying to be a mass adoption network where everyone's using it for every transaction across the globe. Bitcoin L1 certainly isn't either. Lightning self custodial + decentralized is still DOA with terrible recieving UX and expensive fees for LSP solutions like Zeus and Pheonix. Lightning currently STILL needs to make make custodianship or centralization concessions for UX even remotely comparable to Apple Pay or Venmo.
I think lightning is the best thing to come out of Bitcoin is 10 years though and hope there can be a holy grail solution created so monero can adopt it. It could very well still be possible.