I can relate, see Exercises in absurdity, or ... M-Audio Code controller for the long version.
I don’t have any experience with Ableton, dead or alive, but “the others” are likely using MMC or Mackie to control its transport, whereas the Pyramid only talks MIDI Clock which is a rather different species as it’s transport and sync integrated. Which is why generally the device sending “MIDI Play” needs to be the clock master as well.
The Pyramid can’t talk MMC but Mackie transport is just Note on messages which it obviously can. The Pyramid play button can’t be remapped, but you could create a “Mackie” instrument definition which maps the Pyramid pads to Mackie transport control notes (for example, C pad = Play, D pad = stop etc). Which is not the same thing, but would allow you to control Ableton transport from Pyramid while keeping Ableton the clock master.