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At the end of Return of the Jedi, the Death Star and the Sith boss(es) are killed and everyone is happy.
But thirty years later in The Force Awakens it seems like the new bad guys are bigger and stronger than ever. What did the Jedi and the light side of the Force really accomplish?
The Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star II and the Sith were defeated, leading to the eventual defeat of the Empire. The Empire was forced to sign the Galactic Concordance, which limited the territory of the Empire and brought peace to the galaxy. The Empire was replaced with the New Republic which was more free like the Old Republic. Ultimately, this gave the galaxy about 30 years of peace and freedom from an evil tyrant with the power to destroy whole planets with the Death Star II.
Unfortunately, history repeats itself. The pacifists in the New Republic rested on their laurels and disarmed themselves, similar to how the pacifists in the Old Republic opposed the Military Creation Act right up until the minute the Republic discovered that the Separatists were massing a huge droid army which they could use to attack the Republic. In some cases, the same pacifists were responsible for disarming the "good guys" before both wars (e.g. Mon Mothma). Disarming the New Republic allowed the hardliner remnant of the Empire (which formed the First Order) to re-arm and strengthen themselves again. Only a small group from the New Republic remained armed and prepared to fight the First Order: the Resistance.
Had the New Republic not disarmed itself, the galaxy might have enjoyed peace and freedom for more than just 30 years. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
As for the light vs. dark side of the Force, even Yoda admits in Episode V that the future is constantly changing:
Always in motion is the future.
The light and dark sides of the Force are constantly fighting for control. The light side was in control during the Old Republic, then the dark side gained control during the Empire. The light side regained control at the end of Episode VI, and now the light and the dark are fighting for control again.
This answer necessarily includes spoilers from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, as well as the original trilogy. Spoiler tags have not been used, as discussing these spoilers is the entirety of the answer, so be warned.
As fantastic as Null’s answer is, I feel there is a fundamental flaw in the very question asked: the premise that the First Order is stronger than the Empire. Starkiller may have been (dramatically) more powerful than the Death Star, but the First Order seemed to be banking everything on it while the Death Star was just another toy for the Empire. The victory in Return of the Jedi would have been no greater than the victory in A New Hope (destruction of a Death Star) had not both the Emperor himself and Darth Vader been on board the Death Star at the time of its destruction. That was the real victory.
But aside from that, as The Force Awakens begins, the Resistance operates openly, no longer hiding in shadows. They have major operations, territory of their own. The New Republic, too, controlled a lot of territory, and while its control over the galaxy was tenuous, it did seem to be seen, outside the First Order itself, as legitimate.
On the other hand, the First Order does not control the system, as the Empire did. It controls limited territory, and it has limited resources and manpower. Under the Empire, personnel were uncountable, endlessly replaceable. Darth Vader could and did kill subordinates left and right just to send a message—and that message was heard loud and clear. Anyone and everyone could and would be replaced. There was no indication that this policy was ever to the Empire’s detriment, at least in terms of reliably manning various positions.1 Stormtroopers and TIE pilots were absolutely loyal without any particular effort on the Empire’s part.
Compare this to what we see in The Force Awakens. Failures and insubordination have to be handled carefully. Stormtroopers have to be carefully monitored, and their ranks have to be filled through a kidnapping program. Hux is portrayed as fairly capable, but unduly arrogant and self-assured, and his ego would be suicidal in the Empire, as would his failure to back up his claims. Neither he nor Captain Phasma would have survived Finn’s defection if Kylo Ren was Darth Vader—and if the First Order was the Empire, and could afford to do that. But the First Order is not the Empire, and Snoke and Kylo Ren know it—and Kylo Ren is not Darth Vader, and Snoke and Kylo Ren know that too. They know that they need Hux, they cannot easily replace him. Indeed, Snoke seems to be willing to put up with quite a lot of incompetence on the part of his apprentice Ren, which is telling in itself.
Finally, we have the speech on Starkiller itself. No one in the Empire was giving the troops inspirational speeches. The troops were going to fight, and die if necessary, because the Empire could and would force them to do so. That rally would have been completely out of place in the Empire.
So between Episode VI and VII, the First Order has been putting on a strong face, because strength is their draw, but at least part of it is a bluff. They have considerable resources, obviously, but they do not have limitless resources—and the Empire very nearly did.
However, when The Last Jedi starts, we see that banking everything on Starkiller—even though it only got used once—appears to have paid off for the First Order. Even though the Resistance destroyed it in short order, that initial volley massively improves the First Order’s position in the galaxy and leads to the Resistance’s desperate straits that we see at the beginning of The Last Jedi, as well as the reluctance of the Resistance’s supposed allies to actually come to their aid. In yet another parallel to A New Hope, it seems that the victory that ended The Force Awakens has not won the war for the Resistance—like the Rebellion before it, which faced an existential threat in the form of the Death Star, the Resistance absolutely had to destroy the Starkiller or it would have been destroyed. But destroying the Starkiller doesn’t destroy the First Order, just as destroying the Death Star did not end the Empire.
But even so, the Empire’s position in the original trilogy, right up until the point where the Emperor and Darth Vader die on the Death Star, is vastly superior to the First Order’s. The fleet chasing the Resistance cruiser for most of the movie seems to be most of the First Order as it exists at the time—no additional ships are available to change the dynamic, at least none close enough to intervene before the cruiser runs out of fuel anyway. Poe Dameron implies that the dreadnought that gets destroyed is not the only one that the First Order has, nor does the leadership of the First Order react terribly strongly to its loss, but nonetheless it is very difficult to imagine Palpatine and Vader standing on the bridge of a star destroyer for hours waiting for the cruiser to run out of fuel. The assault on Crait paled in comparison to the size of the attack on Hoth—and the Resistance’s defense was even more paltry, in comparison to the Rebellion’s defense of Hoth.
One can even begin to suspect that Kylo Ren is right—the days of both Empire and Rebellion are over, and the First Order and Resistant seem to be mere remnants that refuse to give up the ghost. It would be rather interesting for Episode IX to show a galaxy moving on without either of them, though that almost-certainly won’t actually happen. I hope, at least, that the leadership of both First Order and Resistance are shown having to reorient themselves to a galaxy bigger than either of them.
Based on the explanations and reasoning from Expanded Universe (which probably doesn't apply, but might help a bit).
Service on the SSD Executor (Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer) was seen as a fast-track to promotion, so many of the best & brightest of the Imperial Starfleet died when it did making the service quite a bit less competent.
The Emperor was exerting some level of control over everyone his military & government (which probably explains the reason behind the Death Stars; less people to control for the same amount of pew). When he died the morale & energy was lost.
Everything that the First Order did would have been to rebuild the Empire without having access to the Emperor himself, the clone's he caused to be to get himself into power or the infrastructure & authority he had. Carrying out a propaganda & mind-control program on the scale demonstrated in Ep. VII would have been about their limit after 30 years on the outside of government.
Like @KRyan pointed out, the First Order is smaller and more remote from the rest of the Galaxy than the Empire.
BUT what they lack in size they seem to make up for in technological advancements, troop training, and the secrecy of their military build-up.
BTW I love the idea (from the star wars database site) that this is a smaller conflict, largely ignored by the Republic, now unleashed to grow by the destruction of the Hosnian system.
Anyway, my 2 cents - to build on @KRyan's other point - is that the Empire ruled by fear and intimidation, especially within their own ranks, and that (I think canonically) many of the leaders of the Rebellion in the Original Trilogy were defectors from the Empire. Further, there's a deleted scene in RotJ where a Death Star officer is clearly disturbed and conflicted about targeting Endor's moon as there are several battalions still planet-side.
There's also a story arc in Rebels where an administrator of Lothal tries to defect when Vader shows up to punish her for failing to crush the resistance cell there.
These two examples speak to my point directly - the good they did was removing the sinister head and his brutal enforcer from the Empire, and I'm confident that many, many officers and troopers alike were relieved to have this burden lifted from them and admit the atrocities the Empire carried out just to maintain their power.
The loss of Vader and Palpatine must have opened the floodgates for new defection en masse, quickly draining the Empire of its' manpower and morale.
The treaties and such they were forced to accept finalized their defeat but there must have been a massive departure of personnel as well, and their personal stories and operational intelligence would have played a critical role in making sure the Republic could keep the remains of the Empire in check and, maybe more importantly, correct the history books (so to say).
