In the end the maintenance cost for maglev vs bullet trains are about the same. Bullet trains focus more on mechanical maintenance of the track and wheels. While the maintenance of maglev is typically more technical, it requires constant recalibration of the electronics and constant monitoring for alignment.

Maglev is definitely more expensive to build and probably to run, but it seems like it'd be far more reliable? And also a much smoother experience for those on-board?

Traditional steel on rail is actually more reliable in practice. Theoretically the basic mechanics of maglev are more reliable, but in practice they tend to suffer from longer delays when they do fail. This is mostly because the repairs/maintenance for traditional rail can be done by just about anyone, where maglevs tend to be locked in by a single vendor contract.

Maglev has much greater theoretical speed limits than typical contact tracks, as, well, we basically remove the friction between the wheel and the track?

They are theoretically faster, but in practice the speed of trains are most often governed not by the limitations of the trains themselves, but instead are limited by the surrounding infrastructure and terrain.

The cruising speed of railed bullet trains are around 200mph, while the cruising speeds of maglev is around 265mph. Maglevs have gone significantly faster around 375mph, but thats not really a realistic expectation for daily operations.

Imo both are extremely cool, but traditional rail is just a lot more practical for a plethora of reasons. The most important being that the installation and operational cost are just a lot more realistic than maglev. There's a reason there's only a total of 37 miles of maglev in operation today compared to over 30k miles of high-speed rail.