This is the drivers side spring pocket in the cross member, The tail of the spring goes as I drew in red, ie tail is towards inboard side of spring.
if you look at your first picture in this thread the tail is visible on the outboard side of the spring.
You made sure the bottom of the spring was aligned in the control arm pocket. But I think that put the top end of the spring out of alignment with the upper pocket. Maybe the drop springs are half a coil different at the ends?
And maybe the alignment with upper pocket has more impact on spring shape than bottom - maybe why the factory offset top pockets. Lots of maybes, but looking at the angles of the pockets on the cross member ..... I am not smart enough to figure out what they were intending