A simple Windows script. A simple list of commands.

We've had four of our company's top programmers working for hours on this simple issue:

We can manually execute WinSCP.com and connect to our FTP server and execute ls to list remote files (so we KNOW this can work.)

We need two files.
1. A Windows .bat (batch) file
2. All the commands that WinSCP.com will execute

But apparently there are many strange (and undocumented) rules about what you can (and can't) mix on the WinSCP.com command line.

In which of the two files would we place each of these five lines? (We've tried every imaginable combination.)
(Apparently we MUST use /explicitssl, but then are forbidden from using /script.)

You should have started here:
Automate file transfers (or synchronization) to FTP server or SFTP server
Some of your misunderstandings are also covered here:
Why are some WinSCP scripting commands specified in a batch file not executed/failing?

Anyway:
where the script.txt will contain:
The ftpes stands for Explicit TLS. Though you can also use
(-explicitssl is deprecated).
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scriptcommand_open

The easiest is to have WinSCP generate the script for you:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_generateurl#script