Those are very different things, but I don’t see how or where they were conflated.
Because a moment's or even human lifetime's suffering is effectively nothing when compared to eternity. Show me someone who wouldn't trade a hundred years of suffering for an eternity of bliss and I'll show you a silly goof.
So, just like my friend's kiddo getting jabbed, yeah, sucks in the moment but no reasonable person would really call it horrific suffering given that, while unpleasant, it lasted under a day compared to her (hopefully) ~ 35,600 days on Earth. Saying because suffering exists on a human time scale when you're talking about infinity is similarly silly.
You keep coming back to this "why can't God make free will without evil? If he can't, he's not all powerful!"
But it's a basic definition problem. You're effectively asking God to make 1 = 1 AND 1 = 2, which fine, could do but it eliminates the entire usefulness of 1 as a number.
Similarly, if the idea of free will is to find and reward good people and punish those who squander free will (by being jerks) free will probably necessitates the capacity for evil. (Otherwise, just stick with angels. Haven't read the bible thoroughly but I'm pretty sure that's basically the point of angels, perfect beings incapable of doing evil except for the one God made rebellious etc.)