Hi @cking,
It is unfortunate that you are having these issues. You are in the right track. You could try to write the driver in Python to be able to update it quicker. You would also probably want to add ILAs to check if there is data coming from the camera.
You can also check this post as reference https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/post/microzed-chronicles-kria-raspberry-pi-camera
Mario