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I know what you're talking about and the closest I've come to a carbon bike that feels like a metal bike was my old calfee tetra pro. One of the old ones with the Italian BB. I put on a threadless 1" carbon fork. By a lot of peoples standards it would be considered noodly but it still felt efficient when climbing and you could put good power through it without it feeling like it was going to waste. Probably a lot of the magic was the small diameter tubes. This frame however was nowhere near as light as a lot of new stuff, but with the right build I'm sure you could get a tetra pro down to a competitive weight.
I did sell it though because I found other bikes suit my riding style better (often aggressive) and I generally don't have comfort issues on any carbon frames so the smoothness was kind of redundant.
As far as the crux I haven't ridden one but I'm 100% sure you can find a road bike that rides smoother. The carbon gravel bikes all seem pretty stiff, I think they kind of have to be to not fold under big guys using them as a MTB. Even my Hakka MX is stiff and it's "old" now - although I did find it comfortable when I had the 32mm GP5000 on it.
Last comment is have you considered that you may be able to go faster and feel better on a heavier bike?
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