Thanks this is very clear. I use COM objects through PowerShell too, not the Import-Excel module, because I cannot install anything (except Office) on my client's work machine. But I can copy binaries so working with Lua might relieve my headaches from working with PowerShell :)
From the PowerShell Github releases page[1] you can expand 'assets' and 'show more assets' and find a ZIP distribution which doesn't need installing, unzip it. e.g. PowerShell-7.4.2-win-x64.zip . Then from PowerShell 7 somewhere, run
Save-Module ImportExcel -Path C:\Whatever\
and copy that module folder along with the PowerShell folder to the remote machine, and you can import modules from a full path:
Import-Module C:\Whatever\ImportExcel
and do a no-install copy-paste deployment of powershell 7 and modules. (I'm not saying you should do this instead of using Lua, just that you can).