Years later and my Alexa in my bathroom still only successfully starts NPR when I ask it to maybe 80% of the time.

Alexa isn't getting any better at recognizing my voice? At 8am everyday, it hasn't learned I'm likely asking for NPR, not something else? It's not consistent at all.

Controlling Hue lights with it is atrocious too.

Alexa is purely a dumb voice assistant and there is either a complete lack of investment in it, or that money is invested elsewhere like making Alexa more likely to order too much product off Amazon so someone can point to a chart that shows a bug increased sales.