This is the supposition: Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold. If they switched places then Solar energy would change to make both more Earth-like. We might as well have had three instead of just one "Earth" in the solar system if the roulette of early planet formation had played out just a little bit differently.
That's of course too simple. But wouldn't it help a lot if it were the case from the beginning that Venus had had Mars' mass, and Mars had had Venus' mass? Or do other factors dominate mass and distance from the Sun?
Would Venus still have had a thick, but not too thick, atmosphere if it were at 1.5 AU, because it has mass enough to keep one, and wouldn't that have kept it warmer than Mars is today? Including flowing water on its surface under its atmospheric pressure?
Would a Mars at 0.7 AU have been warmer and maybe have had a passing atmosphere created from melting volatiles during a longer era in its history?