The late placement corresponds to the buffer size. I switched to 64 sample buffer and it follows:
What led me to investigate was laying down a quick scratch-bass line to a loop - no plugins in the session. Upon playback, I was appalled at how out-of-the-pocket my playing was. Seemed pretty spot-on while I was playing it! So I consolidated a section of click; sent it out a line output; and plugged that back into the Hi-Z input of the Apollo where the bass was plugged into; and recorded the result. As you can see, it's placed into the timeline late by the buffer amount.
I've been using Pro Tools since Sound Designer, and have had many different interfaces, including an HD rig. This is a bug, or at least something wrong with my system. As I said earlier, other DAWs aren't exhibiting this problem - just Pro Tools Ultimate 2019.