I infer the the key of your question is that all the measures and data we have about elementary particles are very indirect, we are not able to picture a elemental particle mentally as we can picture the Moon holistically, where we have lot of measures like light, shape, maps, trajectory, even go here and bring rocks.... and still we know that's the moon as an holistic tangible entity.

The marble model is almost discarded, although can be useful and accurate enough for many applications same as the "nuclear liquid drop model" that models the whole atom's nuclei as a small drop of liquid.

As far as we know elemental particles can be described as waves. Although the more "recent" model and the one that is considered to give more elemental explanation is the Quantum Field Theory and the Quantum Electrodynamics, where particles can be defined as quantums of an underlining field. So the field is the one that exists by its own and the particles are just certain kind of "ripple" in that field. Again that's another model. And it's difficult to visualize so we all rely on abstract math descriptions. By the way the quantum field theories are among the most ever precise theories created so far, the one that makes predictions with a bigger numerically accuracy.

Also as a curiosity I suggest seeing this interesting video, which shows the pilot wave hypothesis, which seems to be having both, the wave properties as waves and at the same time marble alike nature. It helps to visualize or conceptualize certain properties we know of particles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmC0ygr08tE