She's supposed to be a disabled female who mentors a straight white dude, why change that?
For fans of the comics and cartoons, Madame Web had a distinct design that they would've liked to have seen in live-action. For the RadLibs, she was a disabled woman telling one of the most famous males in fiction what to do.
All Sony had to do was market it as the latter just to shut up the RadLibs, and we could've had a proper Madame Web in the MCU, win-win for both sides.