The thing you're missing is to do with your musical preferences. If you have a piece of music that has the correct (or probably just most appropriate) dynamic range and you're very happy with the mix, then any form of limiting squashes the dynamics - not in the way a compressor does, but when you hit the limiter trigger, then it works to stop the level exceeding your settings. Essential compressing the top section - to whatever you want. Hard limiting where it's simply a prevention of any extra level, or one working a little gentler. All I can say is that when I have very carefully applied compression ONLY to sources, or maybe balanced stereo stems, that needed it, I certainly will not be applying limiting. This requirement has been done better and more musically in a different place. If I want that big thump at the end of the second chorus where the drums, bass and a big guitar come in on that one beat, I will have set the amount of thump. How far it pokes above the remainder. adding a limiter will change. I don't bounce - I simply adjust the maximum level the piece reaches with normalisation which then retains my dynamic, carefully picked. If you want to use a limiter that's an artistic decision - certainly NOT a technical one, because it's basically doing what we complain Spotify, iTunes and Youtube do - alter the piece, and we don't like that.
Using normalisation lets you link a number of pieces together in a musically appropriate way - loud one, quiet one, then final loud one. The quiet one should be quieter, but still stand up when played on it's own. If you do nothing but EDM, for example, you will probably have mixed your music to a common level. Same with rock and metal. However, in these genres there are usually one or two tracks on an album at a lower level. Finding the right one is for ears rather some magic LUFS number.