My point is that the only counterexamples you could find to "industry labs > research labs" were in completely non-industrial scenarios like Mathematics and Neuroscience, two famously theoretical disciplines

Mathematics might be plenty large in theory-space, but real-world applicability is much more the domain of physics and thus I would expect many real-world applications to arise from it. So, to me, it's clear one cannot say Physics doesn't deliver on the physical from time to time