Can I safely delete duplicate photos on my ipad without deleting the originals in iCloud Library?

This question or one similar to it seems to be asked a lot, but none of the answers I've seen give me comfort. So, here is my situation.

I am trying to optimize photo storage across my iPhone, iPad and MBP. All are up to date with the latest OS.

I have had iCloud Library turned on for all devices, but the photo counts don't match and there are many photos that are duplicated, probably from various times of turning iCloud Photos on/off and syncing, etc.

The Photos app on the MBP thinks I have 5351 photos and 237 videos in my library. This is the master set that I'd like to make available on the iPad and iPhone.

So, if I turn iCloud Photo storage OFF on the iPad, then look in the Photos app, I see that I have 4,042 photos and 4 videos. I assume these are all stored natively on the iPad. And, if I launch Photos on the MBP and click on the iPad, I see that it shows I have 3766 Already Imported photos and 555 New Items which would be a total of 4321 photos. So none of the numbers add up. There are many, many duplications at the photos that the Photos app sees on the iPad.

What I'd like to do is delete all photos currently stored on the iPad (I think that is a tedious procedure...) so there are none stored natively, then turn iCloud Photos back on and have the photos currently stored on iCloud "sync" to the iPad. I'd hope to have an exact duplicate of what is on the MBP on the iPad without any loss of photos and without any photos on the iPad that are not in iCloud.

Can/should I do this? Will it work? My fear is that I somehow end up with a bunch of original photos stored in iCloud that get deleted when I turn iCloud Photos back on on the iPad.