It really easy with ASDF.
Simple instructions:

## ASDF
## Install ASDF
# https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf
git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf --branch v0.4.3

# do extra ASDF requirements

## Install plugins
asdf plugin-add erlang https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-erlang.git
asdf plugin-add elixir https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-elixir.git
asdf plugin-add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git

# do extra plugins requirements

## General ASDF Plugin Install
asdf plugin-update --all
asdf list-all PLUGIN
asdf install PLUGIN VERSION
asdf global PLUGIN VERSION

I think most people use a version manager like asdf or kerl for that sort of thing. I never really use apt anymore for Feb dependencies i really care about, at least not in my dev machine.

Add the erlang solutions repository and your apt will be up to date. The ubuntu repo’s are rarely up to date (with hardly anything).

Not the package managers have stuff in their repositories, but the distributions maintainers do.

For many distributions you can have community repositories additionally to the dsitributions ones, but those can massively affect the stability of the system.

The only distributions so far that I have seen that keep up with any versions were Gentoo, Funtoo and Arch, perhaps some derivates of those. But these three usually do not lack more than a week behind, and if they do, they usually have reasons for this.

Just take a closer look at your system. Elixir is probably not the only thing years behind. There is probably a lot more stuff.

You can get an excellent, objective, distribution-agnostic breakdown by looking at Repology:

https://repology.org/metapackage/elixir/versions