For frictionless card-creation I have made an org-capture template for quickly adding cards to an org-mode file via a custom Emacs pop-up frame. This is accessible from everywhere with the keybinding (Super + c + a).
Exporting to Anki from Emacs is done via the anki-editor mode for Emacs.
I think org-drill is just better overall since it's all stored as plain-text at the end of the day and each card is really editable and accessible. Anki in my experience has a clunky, slow GUI. It can't beat the creation and editing speed from vim keybindings and macros.
The thing I miss with org-drill is being able to do it on the phone. I have considered trying to integrate it into Orgzly but it does seem like a big project, unfortunately.
This sounds like an issue with something else you have installed in Emacs. I suggest running the profiler to see what is actually taking time. Org-drill itself on an otherwise vanilla config is fast, so it could be that you have hooks that are slow or something.
Exporting to Anki from Emacs is done via the anki-editor mode for Emacs.
https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor