As luck would have it the metal shroud of the old screen fits new screen pretty much perfectly.
Even existing small flaps that used to hold the glass panel can now hold the display pcb eliminating need for any screws!
On the left the pcb slightly leans on the big fat MCU, in the middle shroud flaps are over it and at the far right end shroud flaps are under it. That creates small tension in pcb which is enough to hold it in place pretty well.
This is how it looks like in the panel:
And the satisfying conclusion to this endeavor:
One thing that is not ideal is the front glass being quite thick requires a usb cable with long connector end, your standard phone cables will not click in.
But while this is a conclusion for the project it's not the end for firmware. I still have not utilized the onboard eeprom, which I plan to store settings in.
Changing contrast on the fly, displaying a label in place of the bar graph, custom fonts and ability to display bigger digits at the expense of bar graph are on my radar.
You can follow the firmware github repo for future updates.