Once upon a time, the sharp quote was necessary for lambdas, now that's no longer the case.
So, it appears that (lambda (x) x) and #'(lambda (x) x) are equivalent, but '(lambda (x) x) is not (most importantly, when byte-compiling).
Yes. In fact, the first two are completely identical when evaluated. As described in the manual page you linked:
The following forms are all equivalent:
(lambda (x) (* x x)) (function (lambda (x) (* x x))) #'(lambda (x) (* x x))
Other than trying to support Emacs versions from two decades ago, there's never a reason to sharp quote a lambda.
So don't.
As a sidenote:
Hard quoting a lambda (with
') does make a difference, it prevents byte compilation. I can't think of a scenario where that's useful, but who knows.The backtic is the only quote that's genuinely useful with lambdas, but only if you're not using lexical binding for some reason.