Unable to manually manage music on iphone - among other things

I recently upgraded my old iMac to a Mac mini and the Mac Music app is beyond frustrating (I came from itunes). Let me provide my details first:

iPhone is a 12 mini running iOS 17.1

Mac is running Sonoma 14.0.

Music app is version 1.4.0.118.

I am not an Apple Music subscriber

Here's the plethora of problems I'm having:

1. I am unable to manually manage music on my iPhone from the Music app. I can add songs without a problem but I can't delete them. I also can't delete them through the Finder window unless I use one of the sync options (which I don't use). When the iPhone shows up in Music (it takes plugging/unplugging it 3-5 times before it shows up) it shows all the songs on it but I can't do anything when I click on them, no right click menu, not even the ability to play them. Maybe this is normal behavior and I just don't know but every article I've found says to turn on Manually Manage Music, which I've done. I do not have any syncs turned on.
2. Despite not having sync turned on, whenever I plug the phone in it wipes all of my music and playlists off the phone. Additionally, when I open the Music app itself it deletes three playlists that I have to recreate manually. For some reason it's just the three playlists I keep on my phone, the rest of my playlists remain in the Music app.
3. Album artwork is good in Music but when I transfer to the iPhone it's all the same artwork for most items. It only does this when I add playlists to the phone. Adding individual albums seems to be working fine. Additionally, artwork keeps disappearing in Music even for albums where I've updated it manually.
4. Playlists on the iPhone do not display in the Music app, even after I add them to the phone. Maybe this is normal behavior but if it is that's beyond ridiculous.

So here's what I've done:

-Everything is updated to the most recent version.

-Everything has been deleted and reinstalled.

-Turned on/off syncing to try different things, which doesn't fix the artwork issue.

-I've checked/unchecked everything under the sun. I've turned on syncing, turned it off, turned on/off manually manage, and all the options for album artwork. Currently nothing is set to update automatically (which is how everything was set in itunes).

I understand this is a bunch of errors and that's why I'm at my wit's end. I've been messing with this for two weeks and have tried the most "far out" suggestions I can find online. Nothing works. I work in IT and I have a good knowledge of tech so you can discount any simplistic "reinstall" type suggestions, that's already been done. Thanks for the help.