Voice memos, storage space, and iCloud: Why does Voice Memos take so much space even if the files are in iCloud?

Again continuing my extended soliloquy, I am getting this impression as I work on this:

• Voice memos are kinda-sorta like Photos in that they can be stored in iCloud and synched across devices
• I believe if you just delete the Voice Memos app entirely from one device, all the other devices will still be able to get at the voice memos (presuming they're actually, successfully in iCloud, as they thankfully are in our case). This is what I'm thinking of doing for my case after having made sure the other devices have all the memos.
• Voice memos are kinda-sorta NOT like Photos in that they get stored, in entirety, and in our devices' cases *twice* (the second copy in the hidden dir I mentioned earlier), on the local device, and I can't find any way to change that to the Photos style strategy of load-as-needed
• I have no idea what to make of the memos on my wife's phone that did somehow end up stored in iCloud but are NOT on the local device. I have no idea how this happened, or if it's even still possible. Maybe it was something Apple tried for a while but had too many problems with it and no longer tries. I have no idea whether this state can still be triggered intentionally. I have no idea whether memos that do this can be encouraged to be fully and indefinitely stored locally.

PPS, I should clarify: The context here is that the phone is totally out of space and I believe one of the biggest offenders space wise is Voice Memos. I'm wondering if there's any way I can reduce the footprint VM is taking up.

PPPS, I'm starting to think this is going to turn into yet another case of posting a question on Discussions and have it turn into an extended soliloquy.

But here's another question.

My understanding is if you sign out of iCloud Photos on an iPhone, the photos all get deleted from your phone. (Which is OK if they're all uploaded to iCloud and you have enough space on iCloud, etc., b/c they can all just be reloaded when you sign back into iCloud for Photos.)

Would a similar thing work for Voice Memos? If you were to turn off Voice Memos' iCloud connection, would the voice memos that have been stored in iCloud, all get deleted? While we don't want to lose these voice memos, having them temporarily deleted long enough to, for instance, update the OS, and then reload all the voice memos, might be a good thing to be able to do.