"Then riddle me this: why was Kenobi able to defeat Maul when Maul was standing above a dangling Kenobi? Maul had "the high ground." It didn't hold Ben back, so why would Ben have believed that Anakin wasn't able to pull of his jump?"

I know you want to believe the scenarios are exactly the same in that regard, but they are not. Both Maul and Anakin failed because they were overly convinced in their own abilities. Their overconfidence was their failing.

"It seems to me that you're choosing to file plot holes YOU don't want to acknowledge as "nitpicks."

I don't even find it all that important, to tell you the truth, although I will say this - the second DS was much bigger and more powerful, so the firt DS wasn't simply "copied".