First of all, do you have a permanent resident visa? If so, then for the purposes of applying to universities in the US you are the equivalent of a US citizen. If you are in the US on some other type of visa then this might be something that I am not as familiar with.
It is very helpful that you are considered in-state for the public universities in Florida. Florida has many very good public universities.
In terms of the process being “soul-crushing”, basically I agree with you. The way that top universities handle admissions in the US contributes a great deal to the insane amount of stress that high school students are subject to. However, you really do not need to attend a “big name” university to do very well in life. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and other big name US schools are indeed excellent schools. So are the University of Florida, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Alabama, and at least 200 other universities and colleges in the US. The vast majority of these you can get accepted to with a “top 3%” GPA, a 1380 SAT, and relatively positive references that do not mention the term “axe murderer”. “Progressively more rigorous” classes with some honors and AP classes will help your applications, but are not strictly speaking needed to get accepted to some very good universities (nor is a “top 3%” GPA, although again this will help).
In terms of ECs, to me it sounds like you did what was right for you, and did it very well. This is exactly what you should have done.
Life is not a race. There is nothing wrong with taking a gap year.
One friend of a daughter was one of the strongest students in their high school. Her parents were divorced and her father’s small business was struggling, both of which make it tough to pay for university. She studied for two years at a local community college (while living with her father). Then she transferred to a nearby public university with very good merit based aid (and still lived with her father – she needed a car at this point). I just happened to run into her at a store near our house about a month before she graduated. She ended up graduating university with a marketable major, very low debt, and very good grades. I was very proud of her, and can only imagine how proud her father must have felt at the time.
Many students start university without knowing what their major will be. Both of my daughters changed their major at some point during their freshman year (or right at the beginning of their sophomore year). This is very common and entirely normal.
At the point that I graduated university I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had a degree in mathematics and some software engineering experience, and no clue what to do next. I ended up spending most of my career working in a field that did not even exist at the point that I graduated university – I couldn’t have known at the time where I would end up because it didn’t exist yet. We all figure this out over time.
And life is not a race. The most successful people I have known have in general not taken the “shortest path” to end up wherever they ended up. We all try a bit of this and a bit of that before we figure out what is right for us.