Comment by skeledrew
I feel like there is something missing here. What's stopping you from using a normal def? Aside from the definition itself not being usable inline, there is nothing lambda does that def doesn't. And if you really want a definition close to the calling site, just define it there and then put the name where you want to pass it.
At the end of the day though there's really nothing to prevent you from creating janky code. Heck I saw a wild hack a couple weeks ago that allows for the creation of arbitrary custom syntax with pure Python, so you could create a multi-line lambda if you really want to that badly. But the widely adopted conventions exist for a reason.
> Aside from the definition itself not being usable inline, there is nothing lambda does that def doesn't
Being unable to position it inline is the problem.
You might not see the benefit, but many do. It prevents Python from being a good functional programming, for one thing.