I thought you were talking about MIDI controllers in general and just using the NanoKontrol as an example. It's fairly obviously built primarily for mixer/pan control, but that doesn't mean you can't use it for other things - whether or not it's "comfortable" or not for those other tasks I can't say - other than that you can't really expect super high level feeling from a $50 controller. If you want something specifically for softsynth knob control, you might explore other options such as Behringer's BCR2000 or Novation's Nocturn & SL Zero MkII (and there's plenty more out there).
But basically the beauty of MIDI is that pretty much any control can be mapped to work with, well, anything.