Why do full ice cube trays eventually sublimate into empty ones, yet frost accumulates on every other surface in the freezer?
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The state of matter is a statistics game, especially at the surface. Molecules of water are always jiggling around a little bit, even when frozen solid. From time to time, one of the molecules will wiggle free from the ice crystals. That is basically what “sublimation” in your freezer is.
If you look at a phase diagram, you’ll see that there is no temperature at which water sublimates at 1 atmosphere of pressure. So the ice in your freezer isn’t making this phase transition in permanent way. The ice will just be deposited somewhere else as ice (frost in your freezer typically).
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