Okay, so I found a few other things to rule out. It's not the issue where wifi shows connected, but it's actually using cell ~ but I forgot the wifi connection, restarted and reconnected.
It's not MAC saturation, though I did change the home network to random per network (when doing the above reset), and cleared the holds on my home network.
And further testing shows that it's universal on my home network. I have tested 4 apps, vanadium to an internal IP that hosts my ip camera/security, the main unifi app to my router, Immich app which is photo backups, and connectbot which is a terminal/ssh app and can not see any of my computers (times out).
Again, these were all working 100% for years and I only just noticed they stopped functioning from this one device since the 11th, which is when I returned home from a week long trip. And they all work when I'm on VPN ~ so I'm looking into this issue from the home network/ubiquiti side too.
Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions/advice