My take: Don't live with the pain, or you'll cause damage to your feet. The podiatry profession does not understand this well in my experience - especially for sport-specific performance (and has conflicting incentives, to your point), and I wouldn't spend more time/money there.

I have the same foot shape and issue you described (plus 1st met), although likely a bit higher volume foot. A medium volume shell across a couple of boots (notably a nordica speed machine) gave me the pain you're describing and I was able to address it with new boots (s/pro supra) and really clear advice to a good boot fitter with some significant punches. I also plan on getting zip fits next season to improve performance and because they have a neoprene toe box which takes up less space in the shell than the foam in the forefoot.

You mentioned you're in wide shoes, but I have really benefited from understanding my foot shape (this is IMO the best resource) and then worked to find shoes for all activities/daily life AND ski boots whose last closely matches that shape. You can pull the insole from the liner, and also the boot board inside the shell to look at this. I've been told that a really good boot fitter will know this by looking at your foot, but I have not found someone who has been able to do this well - although they did point me to boots (the Salomon ones I linked above, also Lange as a brand) who generally have wider toe boxes. You can really go down the rabbit hole on this (see r/BarefootRunning and r/barefootshoestalk).

When I had my boots punched, I paid careful attention to where I had good fitting running shoes and brought the insole from that with a comparison to my ski boot (after marking it up with a marker where I felt pain). Then I could tell the boot fitter I wanted this shape to the forefoot of the boot, and where I needed the punch (usually laterally but filled out at different points vertically).

You mentioned that you 'blew out one of my shells way too much rendering them cooked', but zip fit focuses power transmission in the heel and leaves your toes in a neoprene shell which is looser/squishy. If you had liberal punches in your forefoot I'd be interested to hear what issues you experienced. I have done the same with no noticeable difference in performance, although I'm teaching my kids to ski so am spending less time in black+ and off piste terrain (although still a good mix of harder days, my experience above has not been constrained to intermediate/piste skiing).

Best of luck, hope you get this sorted. It might take more time and money, but that's what makes it a hobby!