Export from Photo into Folders labeled by date shot First, just to get this off my chest, I used to have such a beautiful, simple, efficient system of cataloging my photos by date shot, whether from my professional Canon cameras or my iPhone. I did it all out of Lightroom. Then came the time when I could no longer import iPhone into Lightroom and this messed it all up. Then came the time when I could not import even into Photo and this created a nightmare that, if everything works as designed from here forward will take me months, if not years, if ever, to straighten out and at a tremendous loss of time. But Apple has trapped me and I am trying.

My last iPhone upgrade allowed me to finally be able to import from my phone into Photo (I always keep my phone updated) . This still requires a couple of extra, previously unnecessary, steps to go from there to put into folders I can catalog by day right along with my Canon shoots in Lightroom. When I export, the photos show up in folders with the name of the area where they were shot and there can be several such folders from one single day.

This just adds to the nightmare. Is there any way I can set it to export out of photo directly into folders labeled by date with no interference from folders labeled by location?
If I understand your problem correctly, have you tried importing the images from your phone using Image Capture rather than Photo?  You can then put them into whatever folder you like.