This is on Ventura 13.1. This issue "is" plaguing both my wife and I, both on Ventura 13.1. One is a 14 inch M1 macbook pro, the other a 13 inch M2 macbook air. I've made so many changes, trying to straighten out this behavior, and now is "seems" to be fine, after a few hours of making changes! It was so frustrating, having it jump right back to the oldest items when returning to the inbox from, say, the drafts folder. We both like the mac mail client behavior similar to our older macs, with newest items at the bottom of the list, and sorting the list by "received date". The item in "mail/settings/viewing/show most recent at the top" had absolutely no impact on the behavior!
Thanks for ideas. If it returns, I'll try a more methodic approach to correct the misbehavior.