I guess what I’m asking is what are the different functions of the two types of vehicles? Why can’t militaries combine them?
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You’re essentially describing an IFV, it’s not very commonly used because the role of an APC and the role of a tank has very little overlap and what makes a good APC makes for a bad tank and vice versa.
APCs are meant to transport a large number of troops quickly around the combat space and are meant to prioritise mobility and troop capacity above pretty much all else. Their armour is only really designed to protect against small arms fire and should never be in direct combat as that would place their troop complement at risk.
MBTs are designed to be an armoured spearhead that can stand toe to toe against other tanks, hence prioritise armour and fire power and only secondly mobility.
They need to be heavily armoured, highly survivable and be heavily armed to do so, placing heavy restrictions on profile and available space and ideally should always be in active combat or repositioning to ambush in active combat.
Hence these two roles are somewhat incompatible, APCs should be positioning, deploying, then retreating to increase the strategic and operational mobility of infantry forces, whereas MBTs should flanking, ambushing and otherwise fighting in the thick of combat.
IFVs do have a niche in providing some heavy weapons support to infantry against other soft targets hence are typically armed with autocannons designed around anti-infantry purposes. This allows the specialisation of MBTs into a pure anti-tank role, but this is typically unnecessary as modern armaments have by and large outpaced modern armour to the point that you don’t need specialised tank destroyers like in WW2.
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