Do data structures help to reduce complexity of operations, at the cost of something else?
To represent a collection of integers, you can use an array with one word of memory per element. For instance, say $A = [0,1,7,10]$. Alternatively, you could use an array $B$ to represent the same collection in the obvious way: $B = [1,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,1]$. Searching for element $x$ in $A$ takes $\Theta(n)$ time (or perhaps just logarithmic time if $A$ is indeed sorted), but you can do the same in $B$ in $O(1)$ time by just looking at $B[x]$, i.e. just indexing $B$ at position $x$. This is a tradeoff: by using more memory for $B$, you get faster lookups. Time-memory tradeoffs like this are often encountered.

Sometimes, one can show that to solve a problem, you must always no matter what spend some time, memory, or other resource to solve it. In such results, one must always specify the model of computation used. For instance, there is a well-known decision tree lower bound of $\Omega(n \log n)$ for sorting. So in this model, you absolutely can't beat this bound no matter what you do.