Traffic was monitored on a physical ethernet cable via USB ethernet adapter to iOS device.
Charles Proxy was only used to time-associate manual application launch with attempts to reach destination hostnames and ports, to allowlist those on the separate physical router. If there was an open question about an app being a potential source of unexpected packets, the app was offloaded (data stayed on device, but app cannot be started).
MDM was not used to redirect DNS, only toggling features off in Apple Configurator.
Surely you used several USB Ethernet adapters to rule them out as being the source as well right? Those types of dongles are well known for calling home.