Yes, I know. I have designed with the RP2040 and 180μA is extremely high power usage for deep sleep mode.

The ESP32 has far more sleep modes than that that each use different power, you are just talking about its light sleep: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/api-reference/system/sleep_modes.html

You are comparing the deep sleep of the pi pico to the light sleep of the ESP32 where the coprocessor is still running. The rp2040 light sleep mode consumes 7mA. It is literally orders of magnitude different. https://learn.adafruit.com/deep-sleep-with-circuitpython/rp2040-sleep (they only did light sleep.mode because deep sleep wasn't even available)

As far as the professional chips, they cost on average far more for less and less sleep gains. (A lot of the L series of stm is like 15€ per chip)

You would definitely use deep sleep for this as you would only wake it up to start using it with a button press. Whether they would use light sleep or deep sleep, there is an order of magnitude difference in sleep power consumption.