OK, take a deep breath. I’ve been gigging with first the Duo and now the DuoX for a lot of years. It’s absolutely possible, and the architecture makes a whole ton of stuff possible that isn’t possible elsewhere.
Here’s where I think the confusion lies - and it’s important to take note of the terminology used by MOD because it’s VERY different to that used by most other pedal and effect manufacturers. Notice that the elements you’re trying to switch between are called ‘pedalboards’ not patches. This is the equivalent to literally unplugged one entire pedalboard and hooking up another one. The nearest actual experience I could imagine would be loading an entirely new Ableton project mid-song - a thing no-one would ever expect to do on a gig. The ‘patches’ that you’re used to switching between on any other unit are the snapshots referred to in previous posts. The ability to have a TON of stuff going on between snapshots is amazing, and means that you can load up a bunch of pedals and repatch them in really interesting ways within that pedal board.
With the Duo, processing power may be a thing you bang up against - if you want too many pedals available at one time, and then you might find yourself wanting to switch pedalboards mid-song - I did it for years with my Duo, using a looper or a massive reverb after the Duo to bridge the gap. It meant I was able to have completely different pedal sets for two halves of the same song. Truly amazing, with only a <2 second> gap in switching.
With the DuoX and the additional processing power, I almost never switch board mid-piece. I’ve even brought all the looping into the DuoX instead of using an external (though I do still have a reverb pedal after it just in case I want to do something wild 
)
So, breathe in, breathe out, take some time to investigate what this particular architecture makes possible, and try not to confuse the patches on any other processor with the concept of pedalboards within the Duo family. It may be that you find it’s not what you’re looking for after all, but at the moment, your dismissal of it as a functioning unit, when SO many people are doing gigs and records and tours and god-knows what with it suggests you’re probably not working with it in a way that optimises what it was built to do…
Steve