The properties of that "stuff" differs and varies considerably. The properties of some elements, such as carbon are essential for the machinery life. For homework contrast the properties of sodium with carbon, then reassess your claim that the stuff is all identical.
"It's clear to me that matter and its underlying physics cannot fully account for this."
Energy... Matter is simply a form of energy.
"IOW, the universe does not "reduce" to one single principle, matter."
Matter is a form of energy and isn't a principle. A principle is a statement regarding a property of some element of reality. Energy is the fundamental element of reality. It is its animating force. I don't think the word reduce is an appropriate term to refer to nature's fundamental animating force.
"There's an intangible "something else" at work in it as well."
Physics is consistent w/o anything else that stands as some arbitrary fifth force. It's also complete, in that all objects and processes can be seen as arising from the physics itself.
Do you really believe that life is just a "machine?"
Sodium and carbon are each elements; and we know that they are classified in the periodic table of the elements in terms of their atomic parts. That is, there's something more basic in nature than elements: subatomic particles, ultimately quarks.
You wrote, "Energy... Matter is simply a form of energy." On the face of it, that appears to be true. But what does this statement actually tell us about matter? Einstein proposed an equivalence of mass and energy, the famous equation E = MC2 of his paper on special relativity (1905). Yet strictly speaking, mass is a property of matter, not matter itself. The equation does not directly describe particulate matter, nor does it appear to have much to say about massless particles (photons).
You wrote:
Matter is a form of energy and isn't a principle. A principle is a statement regarding a property of some element of reality. Energy is the fundamental element of reality. It is its animating force. I don't think the word reduce is an appropriate term to refer to nature's fundamental animating force.I'm not sure I can agree with your definition of "principle" here. It seems that what you're describing here is more like an attribute or property. A principle is defined as a descriptive comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption, and as such is expected to have universal, not contingent, application (attributes are contingent and specific).
We are not necessarily looking for an arbitrary fifth force in nature. The missing pieces of the physical picture may not be forces at all, but relations.
I get the distinct impression that you think we can simply assert that "Energy is the fundamental element of reality. It is its animating force" and be done with it. But putting it very crudely, what tells the energy where to go, and what to do?
And I outright disagree with you here: "[Physics is] also complete, in that all objects and processes can be seen as arising from the physics itself."
Living systems are based in physics — because they are in part material systems — but they do not entirely "reduce" to physics. The causal or organizational structure of life forms is what sets them apart from non-living systems in nature (which are essentially simple, or as Robert Rosen put it, mechanical). And this structure is not a physical or material phenomenon.