You are missing things. The penalty to perception risk of things like traps/puzzles
that can't be seen without color & similar are how 5e handles dark vision.. Period. It's not punishing players to hit that any more than it is for monsters to hit their hp. Unfortunately 5e is tuned so far in favor of the player in so many ways that simply mentioning that players get surly & refuse to accept anything but the perfection of dark vision generates accusations of a gm punishing their players alongside a use your words tall it out backhand. It gets tiring being setup as the villain by an edition.
Frankly, I consider this completely irrelevant to what I said.
It doesn't matter if you ARE playing by the rules or not, if the players are so clearly demonstrating that they
don't like what you're giving them in the game--whether
you consider that dislike appropriate or inappropriate is honestly not all that impactful on how the situation should be resolved. Now, obviously, they must like all the other stuff enough to stick with it, or you wouldn't have a stable enough gaming group to have the complaint in the first place. From there, if you feel you're being "set up as the villain" (unless that's hyperbole, which you don't seem to intend it as), then you want something from the game that your players don't, and vice versa.
I'm not sure whether you are referring to me or them when you mention a "use your words tal[k] it out backhand," but if that's how you feel about your players then there may be even worse problems than I'd previously assumed. You sound like you
resent your players. Which, if true, you may want to consider whether you should keep running games for that group. Resentment is very difficult to ameliorate once it takes root.
If you don't actually
resent your players and you're just frustrated with the situation, again, I really think that you need to have a long
out-of-game conversation with them. There's clearly a gap between you and them, which you seem to be filling with some rather uncharitable descriptions of their thoughts and feelings on the matter (characterizing them as petulant children). It's very likely there's more to it, and given you have the reins of power here, it kinda is your responsibility to find out what they
want and why they (from your perspective) are making such perfectionistic demands, that (objectively) extend outside the actual remit of the rules for darkvision. To find out why they (presumably, but I don't think this is a stretch) feel "cheated" when their darkvision is not the cure-all for lighting-based difficulties.