I've had good results from the BLTouch and the Creality version (CRTouch) on a couple of Ender 3's, first using Marlin and now using Klipper.
Once I got my head wrapped around Klipper, I haven't looked back and have been very happy with it. It has a learning curve, but it's not particularly steep, especially with a well-known/very-common printer like an Ender.
If you want to just stick with Marlin, I'd follow the same process you used to flash the BLTouch firmware onto it, just flashing a version that doesn't have touch support.