What's the difference between Recents and My Photo Stream?

I was looking at Albums in my Photos app (Photos > Albums) and two presumably default albums caught my eye: Recents and My Photo Stream.

Earlier today I had used Airdrop to transfer some images from my phone to the Mac Finder. These are images I did not want to go into the Photos app on the Mac. As soon as I transferred the images to the Mac, I deleted them on the phone to avoid duplication. When I go onto My Photo Stream on the phone this evening, the images that I deleted are gone, as they should be.

So imagine my confusion when I go into the Recents album on the phone and it looks like all of the photos that I had deleted are still there!

Another puzzle: when I go into Recents, I seem to see all of the photos that I had taken since I first started using iPhone (the ones that I want to remain on the iPhone). But when I go into My Photo Stream, the images only date back to this year.

So in summary, My Photo Stream is correctly missing the photos that I deleted, but it lacks the full history of photos that should be on the phone. Recents shows the full history of all the photos that should be on the phone, but it is also showing the photos that should have been deleted!

I thought I understood after all these years how photos are supposed to work on the iPhone and now I am totally baffled. What is the purpose of these two albums and why does one of them show unnecessary duplication of images that should have been deleted from the phone?

iOS 16.4.1