When using RN with a web view you can easily communicate with RN using the postMessage API. From there, you can use RN for all of the native specific functionality. Most of the "native" code is shared between ios and android at that point. If you only need to support iOS then this is less valuable. This is the reason why things like Cordova exist. However, I find the communication between webviews and RN far more enjoyable to using Cordova + plugins.
