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Because with Fire TV you are actually getting Dolby Digital (AC3). Not Dolby Digital+ (EAC3). Your sound bar does not license decoding of DD+.
Netflix only delivers the 5.1 streams in DD+ and since your sound bar does not (and neither your TV) support DD+, ShieldTV and Nexus Player can't do "5.1". It's not so much about the channels but the encoding it is tied to.
It is possible that if Shield TV licensed DD+ that it would transcode DD+ into DD for you. But it wouldn't matter much since with a sound bar you really can't get any enhancement of sound past 2 channels. This is also partly the reason they don't license DD+. The bang for buck is not there
I'm just going to add here since I have owned many of these products in question...
I wanted to love my SHIELD - But it gave me so many basic issues it has since found a new home. I also had 5.1 issues with the SHIELD. Mine was even more fun, if you selected 5.1 on the Netflix interface if would stop playing all sound along with all kinds of other issues.
Now, just as in this thread it seemed everyone wanting to point the finger at everything but the SHIELD. Simple fact is I could plug a Roku, Apple TV or Fire device into the the same HDMI port and have none of these issues.
Now, this was using ARC, because like many people I have a perfectly good AVR that supports it but does not switch HDMI 2.0. If I plugged the SHIELD into the receiver and limited myself to 1080p most of my issues were resolved.
Now I know ARC isn't perfect, but again no other device had issues passing through 5.1 over ARC perfectly. This includes the internal streaming on my TV passing back through ARC.
As far as my TV, it is a 2016 P Series that supports probably more formats than 99% of Displays on the market. It is actually one of the few sets that will pass DD+ over ARC and not just base DD.
There is definitely real issues with a lot of surround sound setups on Android TV.
My end game is to get a Xbox One S or a PS4 Slim if it indeed launches soon. This gives me 4k HDR output for streaming and a UHD blu ray player all for 100 bucks more than the base SHIELD or the same price as the Pro SHIELD.
What if you cast netflix or use a Chromecast?
I have had, and still occasionally have issues with Netflix on my Shield. It is probably some HDCP issue with Netflix failing to verify support for everything along the chain. Depending on how I set things up I would either lose 4k if I went through my receiver or I would lose surround sound if I went through my TV, even though both worked in other apps either way. Currently Netflix seems to support 4k like 20% of the time and usually only works in 1080p. Netflix on the Shield just seems to be really picky about detecting support for things.
What about using Bluetooth to connect the soundbar to the SHIELD?
Pretty common problem for soundbars. Those things are pretty crap really, providing a marginal improvement over TV sound. Theres a reason /r/hometheater frowns upon them.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/840181/shield-android-tv/setup-help-for-netflix-5-1-surround-sound/
So looking at your two configs:
My bet is the Vizio doesn't support EAC3 decoding
EAC3 is not supported over optical.
What should you do? Get a refurb receiver, get 2 speakers, maybe a sub, and start building a real 5.1 system. Pawn the soundbar off on someone else.