So Zooz support came back basically pointing at @jtp10181 's answer, which of course makes sense considering he's the authority on such things. Complete review indicates this is not a device issue.
Now my aim goes to hubitat, which i'm still not entirely clear on how to get them to look at something like this.
Here's my question to whoever is reading, what's the answer here? In my mind ZIP is now antiquated and we should be working towards the "new version". I'm intermediate at best when it comes to this level of smarthome tech, but i prefer to always be on the latest, and most feature rich version of anything I run in my homelab. In my mind, Zwave JS is that. Am i wrong to think that? And how are we going to proceed into the future with newer technologies as they relate to Zwave? What am i losing by not using Zwave JS over ZIP?
This is all probably a non issue, and i should probably flip back to legacy but that feels more complacent and less about solving the problem at hand and that just never sits right for me.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk and i appreciate any feedback.
EDIT: I actually just noticed they released some extra JS tools. Maybe this can help figure this out? I haven't read much into it yet, but plan to poke at it later.