You don't need to be an academic to do research, but the point of being an academic is you are rigorously trained to do good quality research, as well as having access to lots of resources to help your research that you simply might not get outside of academia.

The problem is, without training in something (i.e. not just how to do research, but for anything and everything) you simply don't know what you don't know. You might write a paper you think is brilliant research but to a trained academic they may spot countless e flaws, fallacies, omissions and other problems that render your research worthless.

A masters gives you a taste of research training, but that's all it is: a taste. A PhD gives you a complete set of research skills. Continuing in academia just allows you to improve your research skills.

Bottom line is, it is possible to do good quality research with no experience in academia, but you will probably be making life a lot more difficult for yourself than if you just knuckled down and did a PhD or something.