iCloud is a pile of crap with eventual consistency everywhere, including some really extreme interpretations of "eventual": I've had deleted "favorite places" on Maps persist for years. Deleting them would hide them from the local device, yet restoring a brand new device would bring them back.
The whole thing feels like it's running on duct tape, wishful thinking and a large chunk of non-technical users that would blame themselves rather than the shitty tech when weird things like this happen.