I had used Meet in a Gapps context pre-pandemic, and perhaps due to the confusion you describe was unable to create a meeting in my GMail account and get a link for people to click on to join— the closest I could do was send them a calendar invite, and that was unacceptable.
Later on, it became possible to just go to meet.google.com and click "Start a Meeting".
Yeah, the interface with "Start A Meeting" was always there, but as far as I can tell, you had to know the special URL to bring it up - we found out about it on the google branded instructions on our hardware devices in the meeting room.
Later on, it became possible to just go to meet.google.com and click "Start a Meeting".