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But I suppose her parents must've liked her, at least.

An extraordinary number of characters like Egwene. She genuinely has the widest range of friends among all the main characters. Wonder why...

She's probably easy to like but hard to love. She's got that drive, that certainty that kind of sweeps people up. She's easy on the eyes, she is friendly, is superficially interested in everything and that can really draw you in. She's probably fun to hang out with, even if on closer examination, she takes herself way too seriously. Note that she doesn't seem to have much sense of humor, although IIRC, there are references to her giggling with her friends, so she is clearly capable of bonding over shared experiences.

Remember, too, Egwene is the member of the cast to whom "politician" most purely applies. Other characters have political skills, but their vocations and interests extend beyond politics, so that those skills are merely a tool in their arsenal. Egwene is the one whose eventual life becomes politics. Her arc is not so much about her channeling and action feats in the final trilogy as it is about her political quest to get her hands on the big stick with which she will accomplish much of what she does in those scenes. And a critical skill for a politician (often overlooked in a mass media culture, where there is more coverage of, than contact with, politicians) is creating a good impression on short acquaintance. They master the art of giving the appearance of taking a deep personal interest in you, with touching and eye contact and questions they aren't listening to the answers to, and also the ability to recall faces and one or two facts to attach to those faces years down the road, so when you meet them again, you really believe they care about you. Now of course, Egwene does not run for office, and these are not strictly necessary skills, but the fact that she succeeds in politics after being dumped into deep water suggests a natural inclination for the whole skillset. Note that when she is merely passing through the rebel camps in between Salidar and her captivity in the Tower, she is very conscious of the way she is perceived, and somewhat perturbed at a trend of negative reactions. That could support the idea that Egwene reflexively tries to make a good impression and be nice to people at first shot and the idea that her reptuation precedes her, and means she can't do her usual "nice guy" thing, is upsetting.

I'm not saying this is nefarious calculation on her part, just that she's a certain type of personality, who likes being nice and being liked and makes it easy to like her. It's just that in the long run, there's not a lot below the surface of her likeability. Her relationships are lots of flash and no substance, and through skill or luck, she manages to parlay the good impression from the flash into a trade for substantive help and support from people in her life. A lot of her actual help turns out to be empty gestures for which people end up appreciating the effort even as it turns out something else actually solves the problem Egwene didn't actually help with.

The problem with Egwene is when the going gets tough. Remember, that even the worst view of her has to admit a lot of good qualities and accomplishments, and that she is one of the fraction of a percentage of people with an idea the important conflict at stake. She merely suffers in comparison to EVERYONE else. Those other main characters are a miniscule fraction of their world, but they're almost all better than she. If you take the big picture, Egwene is like, the 12th most impressive player in the events leading up to Tarmon Gaidon. That's amazing on a world wide scale. Unfortunately, the focus on that elite group at the top of the pyramid means Egwene ranks somewhere near the bottom of major characters. She's like that soccer player who just started bitching about her playing time in the World Cup. She's one of the greatest soccer players in the country, but on the scale of arguably the best soccer team in the world, she's the worst. She'd be the star on many, many teams in the country, but she sucks next to her teammates.

Egwene makes friends quick and easy, and then they kind of drift away, as she pursues what's more important to her, and they don't quite get dumped or betrayed, so she's still on their list of friends, and they still think fondly of her, and it helps them gloss over her actual treatment of them, but suddenly you realize that they seem to be spending more time with, and cultivating a more fulfiling relationship with, Elayne. Elayne, whose presentation as aloof, haughty or arrogant no doubt puts a lot of people off at first, until they have to rely on her in a crisis, and suddenly they find themselves getting along a lot better with her. Egwene made friends first with Nynaeve, with Rand, and with Aviendha. And by the end of the mid-series, they are all much closer to Elayne. Min likes her better. By the end of the series, Mat & Elayne have overcome their natural antipathy to form a good working relationship, while his and Egwene's seems to be mostly coasting on nostalgia. I imagine if Uno & Min both complained to Elayne about a Great Captain's performance, immediately before Mat sent a warning about him, Elayne would not balk at removing him by saying "Mat's often wrong."

Egwene's more of a buddy, some you like to hang out with and spend good times together. Elayne and Nynaeve are almost certainly not, both having their own wet-blanket issues. But when the chips are down, when it's really important, when you need someone to have faith in you, or back your play, it's Nynaeve or Elayne who will come through. It's like the saying, "A good friend will help you move, a true friend will help you move a body." Egwene will help you move and try to take over the operation and explain to you how you REALLY want your furniture arranged or that you're loading the truck stupidly. When it comes to a body, she'll lecture about the subject, and she'll spend three days sulking in her tent before agreeing to help you because she doesn't want a mark on her permanent record. And by that time, Nynaeve and Elayne will be sauntering back from the landfill in the swamp whistling nonchalantly and pretending they aren't carrying shovels.

Egwene HAS to fun and likeable on an everyday basis, because it's the only explanation why people put up with her tattling or siding with strangers against them. Another explanation is that she gets credit for loyalty in situations where she is grievously mistaken, such as hiding Rand in Fal Dara, backing Moiraine long after everyone else had had enough of her bullshit, including Moiraine herself, or keeping Siuan employed well past a number of serious red flags against her fitness for any sort of position of authority. These are all objectively stupid things, but Egwene is likeable enough that she gets a pass on it, and people interpret her actions charitably. Because her friends like her, Egwene is seen as loyal to the side she takes, rather than blind or stupid for taking that side in the first place. Later on, her friends' hyper-scrupluous personal standards will prevent them from seeing the fault in her abusive treatment of them. Nynaeve's embarrassment over her not-lie (which would not be a lie by ji'e'toh or impeded by the Three Oaths) to Melaine in Egwene's presence allows her to internalize Egwene's assault to cover her own lies & misdeeds, while overlooking the fact that she firmly resisted the temptation to do exactly what Ewene did - promise the Wise Ones to follow their rules, and then do what she wanted anyway. Meanwhile, in Egwene's head, we see a thing being made about how she does not quit her punishment laps, even though the Wise Ones would never know if she did. What do you think the Wise Ones would hold as more serious a transgression against their orders? Knocking off pointless running early, or going into the dangers of Tel'Aran'Rhiod unsupervised? But Egwene gets credit for not doing the former with one friend, and other friend never learns about the latter. Nynaeve's preference for honesty and shame over not meeting her standard, and Elayne's preference for candor and distaste for keeping secrets also make them feel like Egwene has the moral high ground when she rips into them because they didn't understand her unclear dream messages and almost revealed their existence. So that's another case where she avoids being seen in a negative light in their eyes. And when she is Amyrlin, the easy false comparison to the real Aes Sedai disrespecting her, plus being raised to the shawl by her, make them hesitate to question, much less challenge, her more egregious abuses of her authority over them, and make them more inclined to submit or humble themselves, even unnecessarily, to the one person who showed the least respect or concern for Rand's leadership and stature, and used their familiarity in all the wrong ways. Instead of a lifeline to his old self, his relationship with Egwene became another vector for mistrust and self-loathing, as he typically took the blame for the deterioration of the relationship on himself and his Dragon crap, when it was really due more to her ambitions and shifting priorities.

Part of it is her nature and personality, and other parts just luck and probably a bit of the Pattern nudging thinks because the plan works better if Rand, Mat, Nynaeve, Elayne and Aviendha don't all compare notes and say "What the shit?!" about their common friend.