wifi unable to connect

Running a fresh install of Debian 12 with Gnome DE. Using the default GUI front-end NetworkManager. HW is a usb wifi dongle TPLink TL-WN725N v3. I Installed Package: firmware-realtek -- Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters.

When I toggle WiFi ON in the GUI, I see my wifi network along with other local ones broadcasting, but when I attempt to connect to it I get stuck in a loop prompting for my password (another other poster on reddit previously reported same issue see link at end of post). What gives?? Am I really going to have to resort to setting up a connection manually? Here's some command outputs...

$ lsusb

Bus 004 Device 003: ID 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter

$ lsusb -t

/: Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/6p, 480M

|__ Port 6: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=r8188eu, 480M

$ lsmod | grep r8188eu

*r8188eu 405504 0 *libarc4 16384 1 r8188eu *usbcore 348160 6 ehci_pci,usbhid,ehci_hcd,btusb,r8188eu,uhci_hcd

$ nmcli general (with wifi button toggled OFF)

STATE CONNECTIVITY WIFI-HW WIFI WWAN-HW WWAN
connected full enabled disabled missing enabled

$ nmcli general (with Wifi button toggled ON)

STATE CONNECTIVITY WIFI-HW WIFI WWAN-HW WWAN
connected full enabled enabled missing enabled

$ ip link show up (with Wifi button toggled ON)

3: wlxf0a73119df1e: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000 link/ether f0:a7:31:19:df:1e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

https://old.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/147yo5p/unable_to_connect_to_wifi/