Thanks everyone for responding and helping out - there is some good info in the above posts for sure.
And just to be crystal clear on the issue I'm facing, I can't seem to get the iron to cut evenly across it's width (i.e. cut evenly from left-to-right) while having the iron project out from the side of the plane body just right (and not too far), so that is can properly cut into a corner.
As pointed out, I didn't mention that the blade is manufactured to be slightly wider than the width of the block-plane, by 0.005" for this plane (according to LN).
Everything with the plane looks ok as far as I can tell - the iron side is square to the sharpened end, etc.
David G., I think you and I are on the same page - you definitely are feeling my pain!
I'm sure most here have seen this by now, but Chris Schwarz is apparently not a fan of this plane:
https://neversponsored.substack.com/...plane-to-avoid
Too bad he didn't have any tips on how to set it up properly!