Illustrator cropping objects upon export to PNG

I made six similar and simple designs with a photo and text on top with a stroke. The stroke on the tilde looks fine in Illustrator, as shown in this screenshot:

I exported the several files as PNG to print on A1. Each export took 5-10 minutes and I sent them to the service bureau. I later realized that the tilde was cropped on all designs that had a stroke, as in these examples:

and was fine on the design that did not have a stroke:

The stroke is from the font, I did not expand the appearance of the text. I suspect that this is a known glitch because the cropping is consistent across exports and does not happen with a font that has no stroke. I am using macOS Mojave 10.14.6 and Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 (very old, I know).

Can I avoid this cropping glitch when exporting to PNG?

Update: To answer the comments:

• The tilde is the front-most element. The object at the top, which looks like a leaf, ends at the visible edge and has no invisible elements.

• The file sizes seem huge to me: between 9 MB and 27 MB.

• I preferred to export as PNG because I have a single design with a layer for each background and I turn them visible or invisible before exporting. With a PDF I would have to make 6 copies, then delete the 5 extra layers from each copy 6 times, which I found cumbersome, especially if I then notice a glitch that I need to fix on the designs already saved.

• I dislike saving designs with raster images as PDF because I’ve had file-size problems (see PDF only with JPG photo is 7 times larger than original).