Long time smart home user struggling with Matter

Hoping to find a kind soul in the community that can help me troubleshoot my setup and fix my matter woes.

I’ve had issues with the standard from day one in my HomeKit setup. I’d had a smart home for years but didn’t add any matter devices until the U200 launched. It just wouldn’t connect for me. After days of troubleshooting, I reached out to Apple and after a lot of back and forth my case was raised to higher powers and a call was scheduled to discuss things in depth. Eventually both sides threw in the towel and we assumed something was wrong with the backend of HomeKit in my specific ‘Apple Home’. Creating a new home and adding the devices there had them working straight away. I had to rebuild everything which was a nightmare.

Fast forward a year, I’m trying to add the new IKEA matter over thread devices. The first one works no problem. 9 more to go. Each fails. Timeouts or simply fails to pair. The only way I can get it to work is to add them to my Aqara M100 hub (which I bought to enable additional U200 controls) and then into the Apple Home app from there. I then try to add the Eufy E25 to HomeKit via matter and get the same issues which suggests the thread network isn’t the issue. I’m a complete loss here.

I’ve got 12 Apple home hubs, all with thread. A bunch of Eve Energy plugs plugged in throughout to further bolster the thread network and then some battery end devices. I have gigabit internet and hardwired Linksys nodes throughout the home. I’ve tried tweaking every setting you can think of and nothing seems to make a difference.

Any suggestions? And any quick fixes? Happy to finally jump into Home Assistant but I have a newborn and free time is tight. Can I buy my way out of the problem temporarily and just buy a matter hub that I can add everything to then pair to Apple home? (I think the M100 can only add a handful).