> email is sent over the clear but we are told to use https to connect to the website (for webmails) using https for "security"

This is not true, most is encrypted in transit. It is not end to end, because your email service stores them (perhaps encrypted perhaps not).

Edit: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?h...

You can see 84% of outbound is encrypted. This probably is generally a good proxy for the state of email tls transport.