still can't search engines use meta tags - what am i missing?

Probably that only some of them still matter. Google ignores the meta keywords tag completely and has done for years, so stuffing that does nothing. The ones that count: the title tag (strong signal, and it's what shows in results), the meta description (not a ranking factor, but it's often the snippet, so it affects clicks), meta robots (noindex/nofollow actually get obeyed), and viewport for mobile. Google also rewrites titles and descriptions it thinks don't match the page, so if yours aren't showing, that's usually why.