5ish, regarding the tefillin story, nobody is saying that we don’t need intermediaries. We are objecting to declaring the intermediary a kol yachol, claiming to know he had no yetzer hora and declaring him a partner of Gd.
I much appreciate your attempt to clarify your beliefs but, as you said you did not follow the thread, you may have missed some points being made that represent chabad very differently.
Kol tuv