Seeking Automated Text Wrapping Around Figures in LaTeX: struggling with wrapfig

Question

I would like to have figures with automatic text wrapping around them. I am trying to keep having to tweak figure locations to minimum. I am also not allowed to use two columns for this document.

What I have already tried: Here is a Minimal Working Example (MWE) that I tried to use. In the MWE, changing the variable \wrapenvironment switches between different wrapping environments like \wrapfig, \wrapstuff, and \floatflt, all of them produce outputs where there are massive blank spaces that could have been filled with text. What should I assign as the value for \wrapenvironment that will give me an output (automatic text wrapping without huge white spaces) similar to the example above?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx} % Required for inserting images
\usepackage{caption}
\captionsetup[figure]{font=small} 
\usepackage[margin=0.25in]{geometry} % Set 0.5-inch margins
\usepackage{fancyhdr} % Required for custom headers and footers
\usepackage{lipsum} % For sample text
\usepackage{wrapstuff} % For wrapping text around figures
\usepackage[vflt]{floatflt}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\def\wrapenvironment{wrapstuff}
\title{MWE Figure Wrapping fails}
\date{January 2024}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\lipsum[1-8]
\begin{\wrapenvironment} %{L}{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\textwidth]{example-image}
\end{\wrapenvironment}
\lipsum[11-14]
\begin{\wrapenvironment} %{L}{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\textwidth]{example-image}
\end{\wrapenvironment}
\lipsum[1-2]
\begin{\wrapenvironment} %{L}{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.48\textwidth]{example-image}

\end{\wrapenvironment}
\lipsum[15-20]
\end{document}