WordPress: process content outside the loop; get rid of extra <p> tags around shortcodes

strip-shortcode-ptags.php

/* props to Thomas Griffin
   https://thomasgriffin.io/remove-empty-paragraph-tags-shortcodes-wordpress/
 */

$extra_junk = array(
   '<p>[' => '[', 
   ']</p>' => ']', 
   ']<br />' => ']',
   ']<br>' => ']',
   '<p>&nbsp;</p>' => '',
);
echo do_shortcode( strtr( wpautop( wptexturize( $section_content ) ), $extra_junk ) );

added some more "extra junk" to the array

see also https://gist.github.com/donnamcmaster/849fa1e87f6974565e6bc57fd9f79529 for filtering the_content while within the loop