How could it be that the apex of יעקב's life was specifically the 17 years he lived in מצרים?!

Hashem desires to have a home in the spiritually lowest of places. Globally, that is מצרים. Psychologically, within every person, that is one's emotions.

When יעקב refined מצרים, he had the ultimate completion of his life. When we refine our emotions, we reveal Hashem's Presence throughout the entirety of סדר השתלשלות. This is hinted in the פסוק's enumeration of יעקב's years, "Seven years, and forty and one hundred years".