Could it be the Ledger Nano S actually does what they promised back then? That would mean it's impossible for them to update the firmware to get your seed phrase out, because the hardware doesn't allow it. Maybe I'm too optimistic here, but it could be they were still trying to make a honest product back then, instead of going for maximum profit through subscriptions.
Perhaps, but who knows!? Ledger, sure as hell, isn't going to be honest about it, unless they admit it by mistake. It could be related to hardware and memory limitations with the old Nano S. Something similar to why the old Trezor One still doesn't and can't support Monero after all these years. I guess there isn't enough RAM available on that granddad of a HW to carry out the needed operations. If I remember an old discussion I read somewhere correctly, Monero's privacy scripts and cryptography requires too much memory.