I've been working on this for weeks with no success at all. No issue whatsoever waking up any Windows machines. Very frustrating!
I agree, I've been tinkering with this in the past as well, to find pretty much no answer.
Granted, using WOL to wake up a laptop may seem uncommon, but hey, it should work.
However, I'd love to find a solution for this ...
USB ports are not powered anymore
I suspect this is indeed the issue, which may make some kind of sense for a laptop.
Strange enough though, my Mac Pro (I know, not a laptop) USB would power down during sleep, but since 11.2.1 it no longer powers down USB ports (my RGB keyboard stays on).
Sending the magic packet to the IP does not even "dark wake" the MBP. (I cannot ping it)
When I try to do this with just Ethernet, it fails on my MBP as well.
Do you see the same when doing WOL/Ping to the WiFi connection?
What model/year do you have?
Mine is a 2016 15" MacBook Pro.
I read somewhere that only as of a certain generation, WiFi modules can receive WOL..
Not sure if it affects anything, but do you have Powernap enabled?