Not sure what your range is to flat in the SB. I would have mostly folded pre and sometimes 3-bet.

As played, I would either check/call the flop or check turn. Top pair, marginal kicker is not doing very well when he calls your check-raise and then calls the turn as well. As you say, AK would have likely folded, so his range is pretty strong on the river. No need to strengthen his range like this.

With a marginal hand, you can either have good equity in a small pot, or bad equity in a bloated pot. The former is better. Moreover, you're OOP, so you didn't even get to realize your equity and had to fold.

I would probably 3 bet preflop, also i will never c/r flop, you have bluff catcher, if you c/r he will call you only with better hands, maybe he can have some JTs. So I would check call flop.

Flop: I strongly prefer c/c, given board and villain type, overs like AK, AQ are probably getting check back a some freq. If I was villain, knowing that opponent c/r merge range, I would want to cbet at a lower frequency and polarize my range which is maybe exactly what villain is doing.

Guess my actions where to aggro given the villains preflop/postflop stats/tendencies

Flop raise is probably alright in general but againts a weaktight player with a cbet % of 23 I definitely prefer a call. As played turn seems like a check with this type of hand.

x/r is fine even against low freq cbettor having bunch of backdoors plus top pair but I wouldnt go more than 50% with this hand, I would check turn it gets too thin to value bet ag EP