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If that's true, why didn't SCOTUS rule Ark a natural born citizen?

It did. The opinion makes abundantly clear that the 14th Amendment's "birth" provision takes its meaning from the common law meaning of "natural born citizen." And J. Gray in turn traces the meaning of NBC from its common law counterpart -- natural born subject. This is Part II of Gray's opinion, in which he concludes:

It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.

Then starting Part III J Gray observes:

The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.

This can ONLY mean (given that shortly after the Court states "natural born subject" and "natural born citizen" to be "precisely analogous" terms) that the prevailing "rule" in the U.S. was that "every child born of alien parents was a 'natural born citizen.'" There is no plausible alternative reading for what he means by "the same rule."

Now follow the simple logic:

1. All persons born in the U.S., even to alien parents, are natural born citizens.
2. Wong Kim Ark was born in the U.S.
3. Therefore, in the court's view, Wong Kim Ark was a natural born citizen.

Got it now?

Again, words matter.

Yes, they do. And the fact in Justice Gray's opinion he makes over 30 references to "natural born" (coupled with the fact Wong could not be naturalized) should clue you in as to which source of citizenship the SCOTUS view Wong as having.