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The way I understand it - and I could be wrong - is that highlights and related stuff in ebooks are stored in a proprietary format by vendors (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.), access to the stored data is via proprietary programming, and sharing the stored data is controlled by proprietary algorithms.
How we got to this point is probably due to vendors wanting to lock you into their walled gardens by only giving you access to this stuff when using their devices and their software. "Export" is a way to get data out of an ecosystem and "Import" it into a different ecosystem. This is not something a vendor is going to want you to be doing, since that provides you a path to escape their walled garden.
So in general, you should expect exporting data like this to be difficult if not impossible, and this is "by design" from the vendor. Sure, they'll advertise that so-and-so device allows you to export data. This is for advertising purposes only. What they don't tell you is that the data they will allow you to export is probably useless stuff, and not anything that you'd want to export in the first place. But, they were able to use the "export" word in their advertising to draw in more customers (albeit, kind of on a false pretense).
The above is a general reply on generic problems you might encounter when trying to export. I do not know the details of specifically what Amazon will allow, or Apple, or Google, or any other vendor. Personally, I do not highlight in my ebooks (except for local use), based on the above generic problems I know I'd run into if I wanted to do exporting in any meaningful way. I would consider using highlighting/sharing to a more significant extent only if I were willing to live in the walled garden that vendors have designed it to keep me in. But that's not my nature, so I forego this "feature" of ebooks for the most part. If I run into something important in an ebook that I want to remember or refer back to later, I write it down on a piece of paper. If it's something I really want to remember, or want access to in the long term, I'll take a picture of my written notes with my smart phone and then upload the image to my home server (specifically, the "Paperless-ngx" application that I run in a Docker container on my server). Yes, by then, the notes are totally separate from the ebook. But that's what "export" means.
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