Gilded Ambush Scarabs not always working, MIA: Carto Strongboxes in Red Maps

Spent the last two days trying to find a Carto's strongbox with the person I'm playing with. 60+ scarab'd/atlas spec'd maps later, I got mine and he didn't have his yet. We bought a bunch more Gilded scarabs, and went into his hideout instead of mine. Gilded Ambush Scarabs (tried 4x) do not work in his hideout/atlas (all watchstones complete, all relevant Ambush nodes taken). Am posting on his behalf because I'm about to be a solo player due to this very challenging Challenge.

FYI- if you're having issues with the Ambush Challenge, do NOT run Red maps for it. Carto boxes do not spawn on red maps anymore, or if so the % chance must be far below the 6% chance for Operatives (I got Operatives quite frequently, pretty much every map when properly spec'd into it). After the excessive amount of mapping I've done in reds before realizing it didn't work, I would guess it's something under 1% chance for a Carto in a Red Map - if it's even possible anymore. I've found two Cartographer's Strongboxes on 2 occasions in maps after I stopped counting post 60 Ambush scarabs, the maps were Tier 1 and Tier 2. The first one was Unique and didn't count for the Challenge - but it WAS Carto!

Should mention again, we've been playing since league start and both took the Ambush Atlas Tree passives the moment we could. Our Atlases of Worlds have been finished for quite some time. We are level 95. My 1st Carto strongbox came today, over 3 weeks into the league, with a ton of emphasis put on tracking it down because I really like to complete the Challenges.

Gilded Scarabs bugging out is really bad though, these are something we hoard or spend a ton of currency on because it states the outcome is guaranteed. I see other Gilded Scarabs are not functioning either, after reading through to make sure someone hadn't brought up Gilded Ambush already. It seems a lot of the Gildeds are bugged and I hope there is a way to address it soon.

They do spawn in red maps, I had a T14 one just yesterday. However the spawn rate is apparently annoyingly low.