Azure Update Manager unsupported images and machines

With the introduction of Azure Update Manager and the sunsetting of Azure Update Management through Azure Automation, we as an MSP have been absolutely biting our heads off over some of the limitations of the new product.

We use hundreds of custom imaged VMs in Azure that cannot have the AutomaticByPlatform set because it is not supported. Furthermore, we use CIS marketplace images that are also no longer supported. Even though these VM's have been updated in-place, the original VM still says the source is an unsupported image.

VMs and OSes that were previously supported for patch management are now just full out unsupported and barred from migration because Azure looks at what the VM object metadata has or does not have filled in. It's hard to believe this is the case because if we leverage Arc on the same machine on Hyper-V, it is supported?

We also have entire farms of servers that lose Azure-native update capabilities. And we waited this long only due to promises made by Microsoft to offer enough support to be a full replacement before sunsetting the old Update Management. This is clearly not the case.

Did Microsoft really just push all of their clients in similar scenarios into the hands of third party patch management or are we overlooking options here?