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While I'm not sold on the cabin fire theory, could flying to FL450 have been an attempt to snuff the fire out?

No, previous experience with fires has taught the best policy is to land as quickly as possible. Standard procedure would be to put out all available drag and descend for the nearest aerodrome with all possible haste. Ditching is preferable to cruise in the case of a serious fire. The turning maneuvers west of the peninsula are not consistent with a rational fire response by the crew.

The article talks about the turning moves being a rational choice to go to the Langkawi runway

Those turning moves were east of the peninsula.

That's an interesting hypothesis, one I have not heard discussed yet.

I would speculate that in the case of a fire, the subsequent change in altitude was probably more likely the result of loss of control, or the autopilot was still connected and became confused by the avionics/instrumentation sending it bad/invalid data.

The latter part seems fairly unlikely, but I have no idea what a fire would do if it took out or disrupted the instrumentation, flight computers, etc..

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