Yes, exchanges like Coinbase or Binance are not peer-to-peer. To trade Litecoin or other coins you must register and provide your identification, so your privacy is reduced. It can take days to send USD or other national currency to such exchanges from a bank account.
A peer-to-peer exchange like LocalBitcoins (which is the oldest and most popular) usually doesn’t need your ID, although recently LBC has started collecting ID for advertisers. However, you trade directly with other people, so you can give them cash (or cash equivalent like a gift card code) and receive coins immediately.
TrustedCoinTrades.com is a new peer-to-peer site similar to LocalBitcoins. We don’t require any ID. We also support more coins than Bitcoin, such as Litecoin.