A couple things to consider.
A figure can be historical, meaning they existed in history, but that doesn’t mean everything written about them is an objective fact. Most historical figures have been “mythologized” to some degree, because the telling of history serves cultural and sociological purposes for group identity formation and maintenance. The telling of history is never about merely documenting facts and events. It’s about making meaning out of facts and events. It is the attributed meaning of the facts and events that is often important to the people who tell history, and we need to keep that in mind when reading the Bible too, instead of getting caught-up in endless fact-checking debates. The Bible tells a story, a True story, but the arc of the story and what it communicates about who God is and how he relates to humanity is far more important than the “literal history” of any one facet of the story.
People, including Christ himself, can allude to literary figures to illustrate points. An allusion says absolutely nothing about A) whether the person is a historical person or B) what the person making the reference believes about whether the person is a historical person or C) what in the literary tradition about this person is objective fact and what has been mythologized.
For example, I can make an allusion to Robin Hood in an argument about the government overreaching on tax policy, or an allusion to King Arthur in an essay about leadership and you would not know whether or not they were for sure historical individuals, whether or not I think they were historical individuals, or what in fact is genuinely historical about these two individuals and what is just legend. Robin Hood and King Arthur exist in a literary world that people who share my cultural heritage are familiar with, so I can use them to illustrate my points and people will instantly tap into a whole domain of shared knowledge that helps me communicate. They are “real” people in that sense.
So I think the important thing to get at when we are talking about theology is why certain figures need to be historical or completely factually represented in the Bible to be “real” for the Jewish people and for Jesus’ and the apostles audience. Is it because your view of the Bible and what it is and does requires it? (For your view of inspiration and inerrancy there can be nothing in the Bible that could be evaluated as mythologized or shaped by cultural and literary traditions of the authors?) Is it because your view of Jesus’ divinity requires it? (Jesus was in some way omniscient even after the Incarnation and could not say anything that could be deemed “false” under any evaluation?) Why is the “historicity” very important, and what does “historicity” mean to you?