The centre position itself has changed a lot in the league, that is one part of the solution. I mean sure AD is playing better and more comfortable there now, but when he got to the league Centre was a different position and he is famously a kid who played PG all his life and then grew tall so he had to learn how to play inside, which caused a bit of a trouble for him to play the centre.
Nowadays centres do not bang up each other, they play with skill too, and that is why AD is doing a lot better, he doesn't face Embiid or Gobert type centres in all games, he faces Jokic style players and that doesn't mean they are less talented, it just means it works better for him.
I think AD is still more comfortable playing forward than center. He is quoted that he prefer that position because he can be help defender and he know when someone passed him, there is still a center that got his back. But the Lakers did not acquire a center so he is forced to play as center. It is good that he is adopting but I think the Lakers should give the best position for AD. They should acquire a legit center to go with AD.
There's no easy way for them to get into the playoffs even if they perform better even though they are in good shape right now and AD is a beast recently still no guarantee for them to place on playoffs automatically. Remember many teams are so strong and also AD is injury prone so they need to be consistent and healthy so that they can reach their target and will not get another big upset on their careers.
Even if we remove the injury-prone factor from AD, it will still be very hard for them. He needs to perform a monster performance in order to carry the Lakers. That is very hard and very exhausting. He would not be able to do that the whole season. WB and Lebron also need to do monster performance to match AD. Without help, they will end up at the bottom or play-in again this year.