HAOS on bare metal - cannot remote into HA but cannot connect on my local LAN

ehh, when you get your duckdns And nginx working, then your “tesla key issues” might also be “solved” , so Yes i would believe so
NGINX set up - external tests to keys are erroring .

Beside you kept referring to “Your” AI, and how it kept sending You in Circles ( Which i believe is a common “issue” with AI )

So i suggested you to read the url above, and also the specific documentations in regards to your Apps

PS: i advice you to also take a close look in your HA-RAW-Logs
/Settings/System/Logs, the 3 dots to the right, of the log-overview
( Could help you and others in troubleshooting efforts )