Could be totally unrelated to Lion Air, but the elevator not being able to overpower the stab has always been a problem for Boeing on the 737. Having to trim, per manual, to recover from a stall as the elevator doesn't have enough authority is crazy.
Then on the MAX, first, the MCAS drives nose down stabilizer trim automatically based on the AOA, second, the stabilizer trim commands are NOT interrupted even when the control column is displaced in the opposite direction. A faulty AOA sensor then is all it takes. That leaves fiddling with switches to fix the problem.