You raise questions that perfectly exemplify the present world-view, or a paradigm if you will.
In this paradigm, there are two parallel worlds: one of "real stuff" and one of its "properties". For example, an electron is "real" and its charge and spin are its "properties". This is considered so, even if we can't say absolutely nothing about what an electron really is. We can only say what its properties are ("properties" meaning information about it). We were never able to explain what "matter" is, other to find out a number of informational facts about it. We will never be able to truly explain what "matter" is, if we keep insisting that "matter" and information that describes it, are two separate things.
Think about this: how does electron "know" how to behave? It is because it follows "laws"? Forgive me for quoting galore. Our representation of Nature follows the parlance of social laws: we have players and we have laws. It's just like societal laws. We find it comforting.
But at the same time, we accept that nothing other than random outcome can happen if there is no information. A blindfolded person will chose a random direction. A gambler in Vegas knows this better than anyone. Yet when it comes to basic elements of Nature, we presume they just "know" how to behave and how to "account" for the environment they are in.
Why is that? Why do we think Nature itself needs no information to operate? Isn't this akin to assuming supernatural qualities of Nature?
This is where the notion of information being a "description" of something "real" falls apart. What I am saying isn't even counter-intuitive. It's just on some level frightening to suggest that information exists on its own. It doesn't need "stuff" to make it be. We can't know what "stuff" is. So it's only natural to get rid of it. Even though it may feel as if the world itself lost substance. It didn't of course.
Information we observe is called "discernible". Information used by basic constituents of Nature if called "fundamental".
Fundamental information is consumed by elementary entities in order to create you. Yes, you. And me to. It is the information that electrons and protons use to move, to form atoms, to form the current. A small derivative subset of that fundamental information is what we observe, i.e. discernible information.
These concepts are profoundly important. They contain, in the most elegant form, a generalization of the concept of information as it is espoused in traditional physics. In that (traditional) sense, all you said about observables and the physical world is correct. But you need to change the paradigm. You need to ask yourself: what do you think the observables are? The answer is: they are the source of information. Much of this information is consumed before you and your instruments are even borne into existence, so that you (and me) can have this chat.
Think about it. It does make sense. Even if in the framework of traditional physics we were thought not to think that way. But that's all it is.