Is exposing services to public internet really that complicated?

Hosting for years now but all via tailscale. Never had the courage to have a service publicly exposed. By recently I got a VM on GCP (always free) and installed some stuff on it and exposed it publically. Even though tailscale is a very fast and a easy way to connect (interms of startup time not network speed); somehow just opening a browser and accessing the link without a VPN was a pretty amazing experience. Which is why I am asking for all of your experience with exposure your homelab. Was it a bad idea? I know the negative experience echos a lot more than positive ones. But how scary is it to expose services? Or is the world a terrible place and we should always keep everything locked down?