I think many of the different takes you listed with "consciousness as... X" can actually be held together and are not mutuall exclusive :)
Also, you may enjoy seeing David Chalmer's paper on The Meta-Problem of Consciousness...
"the problem of explaining why we think consciousness is hard to explain" in the first place.
https://philarchive.org/archive/CHATMO-32
I think many of the different takes you listed with "consciousness as... X" can actually be held together and are not mutuall exclusive :)
Also, you may enjoy seeing David Chalmer's paper on The Meta-Problem of Consciousness... "the problem of explaining why we think consciousness is hard to explain" in the first place. https://philarchive.org/archive/CHATMO-32