What is the real position of the tidal bulge?
There is no great contradiction. The offset of the tidal bulge is about 3 degrees. It is exaggerated in diagrams for clarity. The diagram is correct, but not to scale.

This causes the tides to be slightly late. Imagine a person standing on the Earth of the diagram, with the moon directly overhead. The tidal bulge is on their left. The rotation of the Earth will take them towards the left (the moon is also orbiting but its motion is much slower), so a little later (12 min later) they will reach the maximum of the tide. The maximum is delayed by about 12 min.

Actual flows of water around the coast are driven by this tidal bulge, but are complex effects of local topography. The actual flows of water are highly non-linear, including multiple locations at which there is no tide.