Lambdas and steams are not exotic objects to be used in complex algorithms within the reach only of researchers locked away in the labs of a multinational corporation. Even in the life of the everyday developer, they can make life easier, remember less code and more elegance equals fewer bugs and headaches. Let us look at a few simple cases involving strings.
String string = ``abc'';
boolean containsAtLeastOneC = string.chars().anyMatch(c -> c == 'b');
System.out.println(containsAtLeastOneC);//print true
boolean allC = string.chars().allMatch(c -> c == 'b');
System.out.println(allC);//print false
boolean noneMatch_a = string.chars().noneMatch(c -> c == 'a');
System.out.println(noneMatch_a);//print false
boolean noneMatch_d = string.chars().noneMatch(c -> c == 'd');
System.out.println(noneMatch_d);//print true
Without the lambdas and character streams, which can be obtained via the new chars() method, you would probably have cycled over the individual characters in the string, checking them one at a time, or you would have used a regexpr if possible.
Old-school example
for (int i = 0; i < string.length(); i++) {
char c = string.charAt(i);
if (c == 'b') System.out.println("Contains one b");
}