I'm at 10nl with 110k hands experience.

I've been experimenting with smooth calling a raise with pocket AAces in certain situations where I feel more value can be extracted.
An example would be a LP raise where villain is likely 2b attempting to steal the blinds.

On one occasion it ended in disaster with me in the BB flatting a SB raise and allowing him to Cbet and double barrel into me - eventually he hit a flush on the river with suited crap.

On another atempt it almost ended in disaster because I flatted a MP raise in LP with AA and the flop came x4x he raised I call, turn A, he raised I resaised, all in - all in. He had hit a Set of 444's on the flop and I got saved by the turn ace.

Question:
Is it better to just keep it simple and consistently 3bet with pocket Aces?

IMO if you have any type of 3bet game, i think it's imperative that AA be in your range. My reasons for this are if you are 3betting light, you are most likely unbalanced toward semi-bluff hands as they are dealt more frequently obv and removing any big pair like AAces, skews you even farther toward air. In addition, with big pairs in general, you want your SPR's to be lower so your commitment decisions are easier (ie. easier NOT to make a mistake). 3betting does this very nicely. I think mixing it up and flatting in the right spots is ok, but your standard should be to 3bet. My stats at 10nl for AA were 3bet 75%. My winrate with AA at 10NL was 8.37 PTbb/100 over 45K hands. At 25NL I 3bet AA 84% and my winrate was 6.55 PTbb/100 over 32K hands. I don't have a big enough sample at 50NL, so hope this helps.

the more you 3b with rubbish, the more value you get from 3betting the same guys with aces.