Route 53 hosted zone not propagating to specific DNS servers

So long story short, I have a domain that seems to be refusing to propagate to certain worldwide DNS servers. At least half of them. And I have no idea why.

Conditions:

• The registrar for the affected domain is Route 53, whois confirmed.

• The affected domain has a properly created hosted zone, and those NS records were assigned to the domain.

Situation:

• After creating the hosted zone, adding the NS records to the domain, etc. etc. (same process I've gone through dozens of times with other domains), and waiting a week, there are still worldwide DNS servers that are not picking up the records.

What I have tried so far:

• Deleted the hosted zone and started over. Waited 72 hours with low TTLs. The same DNS servers never pick up the change.

• Triple confirmed all records were typo free. Same result.

• Changed the NS records of a different domain within the same Route 53 account, changes were picked up worldwide inside an hour.

• Used a different Route 53 account, created a new hosted zone there, and pointed the NS records of the affected domain to that zone. Waited 72 hours. The same DNS servers refused to pick up the NS records. Put another way, in the original Route 53 account, at least half of worldwide servers refused to pick up the NS records while the rest did. When I used this new Route 53 account and new hosted zone, the same servers refused as the original account.

This last one was the most baffling.

I have never seen anything like this happen before and the only common thread here is the actual domain and AWS.

This is leading to downtime on the affected domain and serious frustration.