Wow man, you nailed it on pretty much every point.

I feel like the users that are still active and enthusiastic would be willing to go much further to help develop the platform than whoever's in charge believes. I'm kind of shocked that they're so absent. Or are they really just leaving it up to the invested users to market this entirely on their own? I've read other posts with users that genuinely want to help but really don't have much to go on.

I guess I'm wondering whether this is something that can be addressed solely by the community itself given better leadership, or if formal channels absolutely need to be opened to work this out. Like, is there anyone we can actually get in touch with that could make a difference? If not, then could some of these issues be handled mostly by the community (say 90%, then serve it up to whoever can actually give the go ahead), for example, finding someone who's willing to add the features users want in exchange for steem. Although, maybe whoever has the authority has given up already, because it doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard to address at least ONE of the problems you've mentioned.