Whether you get a new guitar or stick with your current one, I highly recommend either getting a luthier/repair person to set up your guitar for you or learn to do setups yourself. It's well worth the money and time. This would solve the extreme majority of problems you are having. Unless your guitar has a broken truss rod (which it won't if you've never adjusted it), then it is possible to easily get the string height to a comfortable level by adjusting the truss rod a small amount and slightly lowering the bridge height. From there, fixing stuff like intonation problems and filing sharp fret ends is like a 30 minute process.
It definitely sounds like your current guitars need the truss rod adjusted (in this case tightened), as most guitars need adjustments a couple times per year as the seasons change. Because wood shifts with temperature and humidity changes, your guitar has to be adjusted to compensate for that. I have to loosen the truss rods on my guitars a quarter turn in spring, and tighten them in winter most years.
That Gibson you mentioned trying? Chances are the owner had it well set up. You can get a cheap guitar to play just as nice as an expensive guitar with a good setup. I have an old cheap Fender Precision Bass that I would easily put up there with my Music Man basses in terms of comfort, even though it cost about a fifth of the price, simply because I set it up comfortably.
Cheap guitars almost never are set up well at all from the factory and it is likely yours is still in that state. Good music stores will fix this before they put the guitar for sale but that isn't always the case. Either way, guitars still need to be adjusted once in a while in order to keep being comfortable to play.
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