We've ended up finding a solution for our issue:
we're using the new Xcode 13.2RC (not ideal since it's not a final release yet, but no luck without it) - you'll need the latest MacOS to run it
we've removed support for iOS 12 from our build (which thankfully we could afford to do since only a tiny fraction of our users were still using that version)
These 2 things are both required on our end, trying to do one without the other would still show us the crashes.
I don't know if this is going to be the solution for everybody, so here's a link we've used to get some ideas:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/696197
Also wanted to add to the things we've tested while debugging:
From Xcode Organizer, distributing as Dev or Ad Hoc an archive that presents the issue on Testflight does NOT present the issue when installing directly to device, which reinforces the idea this is not a code/archive issue
We've switched automated app signing to manual using all sorts of provisioning profiles (ad hoc, dev & distribution, using either iOS-only or Apple certificates), and the issue only presents itself when distributing to Testflight/Store using the distribution profiles
At the end of the day, it does look like an Apple issue and we would expect to see a fix soon - especially since more and more people have been faced with a similar problem.