Going to 3d rendering via OpenGL / WebGL was one of the options I considered. But honestly, this is a boatload of complexity. Why do I need to pick up a full 3D rendering library just to draw rectangles on the screen? Plus, consider: the slot viewer (where the rectangles are shown) still needs to draw some UI components (e.g., on hoverover). I still need that UI integration there, even if it's not as performance-sensitive. So I end up needing something along the lines of egui anyway.
I definitely understand that not all UI libraries are going to be optimized for this. But I was surprised that it wasn't easy to e.g. get a high-performance canvas dropped into libraries that specifically advertised themselves as high-performance.