As a manager, I've tried for years to balance both sides of this coin. However, what I find in practice is that your success depends almost entirely on the trust your leadership has in you.

Strong support? Doesn't really matter what you work on, legible or not. Weak support? You can do exactly what they ask and it'll still be an uphill battle, leaving you in a hard situation where you can find ways to do the illegible work, but it will require spending political capital you already don't have (And to preempt the "make that work visible and valued" counterargument, that only goes so far if incentives are misaligned), or gambling that you can change their perceptions by only focusing on the legible work for a time even if it results in worse long-term engineering outcomes and may not bear fruit.

In short, I'd say the most actionable advice I'd give is less about where you spend your time, and more finding a team (or more importantly, a sponsor) where however you spend your time will be valued.

The book Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall is a supporting reference to your take, worth a read.