Maybe I should just give up and conclude that Nextcloud just got issues that is not fixable for me
I am struggling with the same/ or similar related to the poto app.
I feel this might be an issue with the docker image itself (or some specific configuration issue). I did have a nextcloud installation before that had no issues and the photo stuff just worked fine as expected. This installation was not running in dockers but was natively installed on the OS. Everything was working very fine with it.
I am trying to sort this out with nextcloud support just right now, but it's not looking very promising so far. You can look it up here: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/photos-not-shown-in-your-photos/86527/18
My installation now runs in dockers for MariaDB, nextcloud, letsencrypt and redis.
This issue here is burried somewhere in the nextcloud/ letsencrypt container, god knows where.... took a lot of time here already.