I just released a new WriteVTK version (v1.17.0) which allows setting the version of the VTK file format.
So in your original script you can just do:
vtk_model = vtk_grid("HEX27_ex", points, cells; vtkversion = :latest)
(or equivalently, vtkversion = v"2.2") to make sure that ParaView uses the newest node ordering. See the updated docs for more details.