Just practice locking and unlocking by pushing down the left joystick, just like pc users have to practice spinning the camera around when they need to run backwards. It has become second nature to me now. Also, in a lot of cases the enemy "hitbox" is decently large so you can attack from a farther distance away than what you think would be possible. There's many enemies you can safely backpedal out of AOEs if you stay at max attack range.

Also after locking on, you should be able to zoom in/out and have the game remember the zoom distance next time you enable lockon again.