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Submarines were more a tool of strategic/economic warfare, as opposed to anti-combatant tools. Although, as noted, the primary use of submarines in major fleet engagements seemed to be as picket ships.
Submarines played a critical role in two major periods of the war: The first 42 months of the Battle of the Atlantic and the last 24 months of the Battle of the Pacific. In both cases, the primary reason that they were so successful was the same: The enemy didn't dedicate enough resources to stopping them.
The Japanese simply never built enough escorts, destroyers, or ASW planes in the first place. They couldn't really afford to, especially not if they wanted the capital ship force that they did. The end result was free range hunting by US sub captains, once they got their torpedo woes sorted out and enough forward bases established that they could roam the South China Sea.
The Brits had largely fought the U-boats to a standstill by late 1941. U-boats were still sinking freighters, but the rate was no longer in their favor. It was only after the US entered the war, and the USN spent the first 6-12 months of the Atlantic War with their head stuck up their ASW asses, that the war started to tilt back in the favor of the U-boats for a while.
By mid-1943, the Americans had finally embraced a mature ASW doctrine, and the Allies finally had enough DDs and DEs, to say nothing of land-based ASW craft and the newly deployed CVEs, to put the squeeze on the Germans. The ability to finally deploy long-range ASW craft to the Azores was not exactly a decisive blow, but it was in many ways the final nail in the U-boats' coffin, as it eliminated the last major land-based air coverage gap for convoys steaming directly from US or South American ports to Africa (where a lot of traffic was being sent directly, to support the war in the Mediterranean theater).
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