Note that before I became fed up with HomeKit as primary in one of my homes and switched to Hubitat as primary, I had tried Meross HomeKit smart plugs (outlets) and had to return them because they were a MESS (kept becoming unresponsive, wouldn’t pair with HomeKit, etc). So, it may be the outlet itself that is throwing bad stuff at you. If you’re looking for a cheap Zigbee alternative, Third Reality and Sengled have worked fine for me. (Note: TR doesn’t report power). Totally worth not messing with the Wi-Fi driver.
Also, (assuming you use HomeKit and they were working there), have you tried just creating a virtual device in Hubitat to control, using HomeKit integration to send it to HomeKit, and having a HomeKit automation do that same thing on that side. I ddi that previously with a number of outlets, and may be easier than figuring this out 