The lstat method gives you the stats of the link itself. Think of it like 'link stat'.
The stat method gives you the stats of the target file itself. (It follows the symbolic link).
Example, you have a symbolic link 'myhome' which is actually a shortcut to /u02/home/alamba.
With stat, you will get attributes of the target of the link, the '/u02/home/alamba' folder. With lstat you will get the attributes of the 'myhome' link instead.