Looking through the source code of Devel::REPL::Plugin::History, it seems that Devel::REPL::Plugin::ReadLineHistory::WithoutExpansion simply fiddles the wrong bits (well, the ReadLine expansion of the underlying Term::ReadLine object). The source code in Devel::REPL::Plugin::History ignores all that and does the ! expansion in a hardcoded way:

# Devel::REPL::Plugin::History
around 'read' => sub {
   my $orig = shift;
   my ($self, @args) = @_;
   my $line = $self->$orig(@args);
   if (defined $line) {
      if ($line =~ m/^!(.*)$/) {
         my $call = $1;
         $line = $self->history_call($call);
         if (defined $line) {
            $self->print($line."\n");
         } else {
            return "'Unable to find ${call} in history'";
         }
      }
      if ($line =~ m/\S/) {
         $self->push_history($line);
      }
   }
   return $line;
};
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Looking at the code more, prefixing !!1 by whitespace should work around the issue in the way you want...