Zelle can close your account at will. Nobody can close your Bitcoin wallet and nobody can stop you from transacting. Yes the bad thing is if you screw up, the money is gone. The good thing is transactions are irreversible. Bank&credit card transactions can be reversed, while crypto transactions are final once confirmed. There are pros and cons, just like with everything. We are in a gigantic speculative bubble at the moment though. But it's not just crypto, it's for everything.
It depends where you live. In some countries, the third party is corrupt and unreliable... In some countries, the local currency is less stable than crypto and loses value quickly due to hyperinflation. Any two people with access to smartphones and some electricity can exchange crypto without needing to use their own local currency. In some of these countries, using foreign paper money has been a solution, however there are practical advantages to being able to store the digital currency in a digital wallet with a password and exchange fractional amounts without complications of trying to make change in a foreign currency. I've seen some of this first hand. It isn't everything, but it is something.
How did it not? Previously you could not send a payment online without a trusted third party. You needed a PayPal, bank account , credit card processor or someone else to settle the transaction. Now we can deal peer to peer without those parties. For example paypal is notorious for their poor service. They can limit(close) your account at any time and if so, your online business was SCREWED. PayPal used to have a monopoly over online payments. A single party could have destroyed your business in seconds. Second example was Liberty Reserve, which allowed for online irreversible payments. Similar to PayPal, but it was anonymous. As their servers were centralized and they operated without licenses, their business has been shut down. You can't shut down Bitcoin or Ethereum because there is no single point of failure. Bitcoin can only do simple transactions, whereas Ethereum is capable of turing-complete contracts(you can program almost anything). For example, I can receive your token A, only and only if i send you the token B. It allows us to exchange tokens without trusted third parties. For example Uniswap is a decentralized exchange, a so called "automatic market maker". It allows anybody to list their token and exchange it freely. Anybody can raise capital and anybody can make the asset tradeable. Previously the "middle man", the companies decided whether they wanted to list you or not and you had to rely on them.
All of the above existed in a different shape or form. What real problem did crypto solve??? On top of wasting tons of energy