How can I get coins out of the eth network? Is there no other way?

Thanks in advance for answering my noob question. I wanted to start playing around in Uniswap and other dexes so I moved some USDC into a wallet address, but now I just want to get it out. To do anything, I seem to need eth, including converting it to eth. I've tried connecting to various dexes through coinbase wallet, metamask, and trust wallet just to see what kind of options I have.

Do I really need to acquire new eth, send it in, use that new eth to pay gas to transfer my USDC out, paying gas fees at every step, then have this leftover eth just floating around I can't do anything with? If I want to send the USDC to an exchange, swap it to another coin, or whatever? There's no way to turn this USDC into eth and have the gas fees taken out of this amount (or do anything else useful), without sending in outside eth first?