I memorized scales by ear, over a chord. Get a “freeze” pedal and play the chord, and then play the scale over it, until you memorize it “by ear.”
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Yes, good players don’t use scales; they play riffs by sound over chords, by ear.
A scale is just an “index” of notes, with no musical meaning as a melody or riff.
Know your visual scale patterns.
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Personally I found that learning the mechanics of the guitar fretboard alone is not enough to actually being able to memorize and use a scale. I found way more useful to learn which notes may work on which key and chord. And sometimes that involves notes outside of a scale (especially in jazz). That doesn’t mean I don’t work on patterns. That’s necessary to get your fingers and ears used to the sounds. But it’s not enough to enable you to play music, IMO. I started breaking out of what I consider boring scale runs after I started learning about harmony. As somebody pointed out referencing Jens Larsen, learning which notes work on a chord (whether they are arpeggios, quartals, chromatic enclosures, extensions) is way more useful. Thinking about the specific notes is particularly useful, I find: if I see a C7 chord I know I can play the arpeggio notes (C E G Bb) and some interesting extensions like Db, F#, G#. Sometimes they belong to other scales (like superlocrian) which can help, but keeping in mind the notes and their function (b2, #2, #4/b5, #5, 3, 7, etc) is way more important than turning on autopilot and recalling a scale pattern. And to get back to the original question, you can practice the patterns as much as you want, but I find that some recollection of which notes belong to a scale is greatly helpful to actually playing it. Concretely, if I am playing in F major, I try to recall that the 3rd degree is A, the 5th is C, Bb is the 4, E is the maj7, etc. That way I can find a scale note anywhere on the fretboard and take it from there. Mick Goodrick’s approach also recommends learning the notes and their function. That’s way more important than just developing the muscle and visual memory of the patterns, IMO. I also have a background in classical guitar so I can totally relate.