@ac8ga, @ericwerth, @theresa_jarvis, @hkart2, and @AmandaKotch ...
I may have some good news for you. This past weekend, Instructure released a bunch of new updates to Canvas. One of them centers around the first phase of redesigning rubrics. Check out this section of the Canvas Release Notes: Canvas Release Notes (2024-07-20) - Instructure Community - 606797 (canvaslms.com).
Also, if the rubrics redesign option is enabled, when I built a rubric that had different text in all the cells, the columns did line up...even if the amount of text was different. I did not test this in the student view, but I did take a screenshot from the instructor view which you might find interesting:

You'll also notice there is a drop-down list at the top left corner which currently says "Traditional". Other viewing options in this list include "Horizontal" and "Vertical"...which are detailed in the link I provided.
You might want to talk with your school's Canvas administrator about enabling this Feature Option in your Canvas environment.
I hope this will help in some way.