Paradise WAS the waiting place, the purgation place. It was not heaven. Christ was the first one into heaven.
Once you start compounding your errors ... you are not really in the ballgame anymore.
Yours is another example of Catholicism proving its own correctness by twisting words/definitions/etc on a whim to match whatever imputed infallible doctrine. In this case, a vague (and _not_ universally agreed on) notion of "Purgatory" is declared unshakable doctrine, which demands a wild stretch of other verses to buttress the notion, which in turn requires changing the very definition of "Paradise" from "heaven" to "a nice place to wait while your soul is cleansed", which is at stark odds with what the word always meant, which in turn will require anything else referencing "Paradise" be reinterpreted to satisfy the twisted-out-of-all-recognition prior imperative justification - rather than noting that maybe the original obtuse doctrine was incorrect, and adjusting it to fit all other sensible doctrines & definitions.
No it was not the purgation place...No one got cleansed of anything...No one went there because they had sins to pay for...
They weren't waiting to get clean, they were waiting for Jesus to open the doggone door...And he did...
They all left at the same time...And the gates of that place are still wide open...It's empty...
Paradise was the waiting place but not for purging.
There is no indication in the account of the rich man and Lazarus that gives the slightest indication that there was any kind of purging going on.