LAN game found, Client doesnt travel. WAN game not found. Steam OSS. HEEEEELP!

Originally I went through the Blueprint Multiplayer tutorial series that UE offers. Very helpful. Added Steam Party Plugin and Advanced Session plugin. However, when creating a LAN session, it can be found, and joined but even after it shows success, client does not travel to listen server map. After creating a public session, it cannot be found - despite my best efforts to forward ports and destroy firewalls, port 7777 always shows closed and session cant be found. Also, I will occasionally get Destroy Session invalid player state immediately after creating session. I could really use some help here. 15 days. No progress.

Make sure to check steam download region for both host and client so they are the same.
That fixed my problem when my friend couldnt find the server.

steam>settings>downloads>download region

Interesting. That even affects playing in standalone?

Were you able to solve this? I am experiencing the same issue atm.
The call to ClientTravel() happens, but the client does not travel to the new map.