Surely you hit a pair or a draw of some sort more than 13% of the time, right?

Generally speaking you can play suited connectors from later positions, but you should probably fold a hand like 54s from UTG. Folding them always in every situation seems like a pretty big mistake.

SC are hands that want to favor smaller prefloppots with a range advantage. This leans to several problems.
If we add too much SCs in the range of certain positions we end up with a looser range that gets more frequently attacked by hands that dominate these hands.
We also get 3bet quite more often and so loose our range advantage and the SPR gets smaller.
Thats why im somewhat more careful these days with these 45s-89s hands.
So im opening and 3betting them on a much lower frequency and would also be carefull with playing them in 3bp oop as we are loosing then EQr also.

I open some low SC from late position and 3b some as snowie suggests.

There is a video which talks about SC and basically saying that SC has not implied odds bc you lose to better flush so you are never comfortable playing for big pot when you hit your flush. The video also saying that SC has great bluff potential bc it connects with so many ways to the flop and they should be played IP.

SC are also great for board coverage for your 3b range otherwise your range becomes too transparent and obviously you can stack big overpairs when you hit your 2 pairs or trips bc not too many players will expect you to 3b with 56 for example.

There is an argument that 45s 56s 67s are better than 78s 89s bc the latter has some riverse implied odds and it doesn't really make a big difference if you have a pair of 5 or 8 in 3b pot.

There is also an argument that SC are better 3b candidates than a hand like KQ AJ for example bc the latter can be dominated in 3b pot.

I disagree with you saying that everyone is playing around SC. You may be unlucky and don't get enough value out of them. My "small" experience in my games says the opposite.