Help needed using 'Camera Raw Filter' to make a white background in a product photo

The problem nowadays is that people always assume this white background effect, that you frequently see in ads and other commercial images, is a Photoshop effect.

Professional photographers do this with lighting. Most of what you see around you is done that way.

Imitating this in Photoshop is much more difficult than most people think, for the reasons you describe. You need to lift the exposure, and at the same time protect the highlights from blowing out. That requires manual work, masking and so on. It's a lot of work.

Here's a backlight setup. You will then place additional frontal lights for the main subject:

This is straight out of the camera, no masking, no post production:

A before/after of the same problematic image would be more helpful. There are likely many ways to achieve an acceptable outcome.

You didn't mention creating an action, however, I would suggest doing so if you have not.

You could try using Select > Subject and Select > Inverse before running the highlight adjustment in the CR filter.