Just gonna throw this idea out there since you’ve addressed all of the potential mistakes. It looks like if you can grab the CPU by the top, then you can pull it out, right? If so, anytime in doing a construction project and need to do this sort of maneuver, I just put something adhesive like tape it got glue on the top of the part I need to extract (the CPU in your case), then that gives me something to grab onto so I can pull the thing out.
Definitely. Yeah, even magnets might help you out of you’re just trying to pull the CPU up (just keep the magnets away from HDDs and whatnot of course). Best of luck with it all 👍