Without seeing the installation in person, I can't hazard a guess as to why your Campagnolo deraillers won't pass between the ring and the crank. But the Ultegra FD will work fine with a Campag shifter as a permanent solution -- it's not a matter of "limping along". The Campag shifter doesn't index in the Shimano sense. One full stroke of the upshift lever should sweep the chain onto the next ring and then you trim it if necessary with the small clicks, which are finer than the Shimano trim clicks were in our Ultegra days. To downshift, you press the thumb paddle down as many clicks (2 or 3 usually) as it takes to drop the chain onto the next smaller ring. I can't see how the action would be any different with a Campag FD installed. Possibly the 10-speed chain might not shift as precisely with your existing 9-speed FD (because the wider cage has to move a tiny bit farther during a shift in order to engage the narrower chain.)

I hear you that you seem to have bought 4 expensive pieces of kit that you can't use but in our experience an Ultegra FD works so well with a Campag shifter that we don't notice that the name isn't the same.

Disclaimer: we have stayed with our 9-speed set-up so be cautious in extrapolating from our (and your) 9-speed experience to 10. Our rear shifter is a 10-speed Record (old) with a Shiftmate to make it work with a Shimano XTR rear derailler on a Shimano 9-speed cassette (to get the 34-tooth low.) Our front is a Centaur (cheaper) with an Ultegra derailler. When we bought the Ultegra, it was available only in the 10-speed version and so the cage is just slightly narrower than the Tiagra it replaced. But even with a 9-speed chain, it trims well without rub in the normally used gears. (We did step out the bottom bracket a mm or 2 to reduce rubbing against the outer cage plate.)