All of your examples could be negated, I will just do one as an example:

Apple did not spend 20+ years developing the smart phone thinking "I hope this research pays off". The same for the rest of your examples.

Bell Labs, OTOH, was literally like "go do fundamental telecom and computer research, and we will see if we can use it to get ahead".

Those are two different mindsets. Amazon had one goal so did Nvidia, Google, etc, with each venture you cited. Bell Labs was a _research park_ of exploration that we do not recreate today.