Latency compensation? - Sure, if I sit down at a DAW in 2017 I want to be able to assume that latency, both in processing blocks in the machine and with hardware is compensated for appropriately. Of course you want that. Why would you NOT want to be able to not think about it and assume that everything s time correct? With Ardour it is (mostly).

Subgroups - Absolutely. If you are dealing with any non-trivial project you might want to group some audio together. Of course you want to be able to make a sub group if you happen to need one.

You are talking about really fundamental, basic type stuff that a DAW is used for. Ardour does all that stuff. If things become even less trivial it does a bunch of other stuff too.

I'm a MIxbus user, but I've been keeping a current build from GIT since forever, just to follow how it's going. If the builds from Ardour.org are as solid as Mixbus, it should 'just work' on any reasonable linux system. It is my understanding that they are.

Ardour is really the only game in town. It's a bummer, but that's where we are with Linux Audio in 2017.

If what you want is a DAW.