That depends on the college (specially the CA colleges) - and you can look that up for the colleges you consider applying to.
For very many colleges, you wouldn’t need to submit/report your AP scores until AFTER you have been admitted. They wouldn’t be used for acceptance decision, but will be used to give your course credits, or possibly allow you to skip an entry-level class.
But, for yourself, if your “standard testing” scores generally are not reflecting the high grades your school is handing out - then either you just don’t “test well”, or they don’t do a good job at exam preparation - or, maybe their grades are too generous to please the parents?