Thanks a lot for the help. I tried it all but no luck. I also realized that Fdroid uses a pre-release version of Joplin - so I downgraded to the latest on the GitHub and then repeated all of these tests/suggestions but still no change.
I’ve reached out to the devs via a GitHub issue. Hope that helps. Thanks again!!!
Update for anyone who might be experiencing this issue:
I finally found a workaround “hacky” solution. I exported all of my notes to a backup file on desktop, sent it to my phone, put my phone in airplane mode, imported the backup, deleted all of the duplicate notes which resulted (because the phone was partway synced), turned off airplane mode, synced, then switched to desktop and synced.
In the syncing process a lot of notes were unnecessarily deleted and replaced with exact copies. So it wasn’t elegant, but it got the job done. Everything seems to be working now (I think)