Apple Watch will not automatically connect to Wi-FI & re-enables Private Address

I have been experiencing an issue since watchOS 7 where my Apple Watch will:

1. Not automatically connect to Wi-Fi
2. Constantly re-enable Private Address for my network

To be more specific, I connect my Apple Watch to my Wi-Fi network, turn off Private Address, and select the option to Auto-Join to the network.

However, let's say I walk out of range of my iPhone. The expected behavior is that my Watch will connect to Wi-Fi, but it does not do so. It simply displays the "not connected to iPhone" icon. Noticing this, I pop into Settings > Wi-Fi, and it populates the list of networks around me (including mine), but it does not connect to any of them.

I then tap on my network, and it reconnects without asking me my password-- so it clearly "remembers" the network, even if it's not automatically connected to it. Then, I tap my network name and find that Auto-Join is still turned on, but Private Address has also re-enabled itself. So, I turn Private Address off and go about my business... until some undefined amount of time later, when I go out of range of my iPhone and the whole process repeats. Watch doesn't automatically reconnect until I manually tell it to do so, and Private Address is turned back on.

I have done everything imaginable, including upgrading watchOS every time a new update has gone out, wiping the Watch entirely and setting it up as new, seeing if the same thing happens on my iPhone, iPad, or Macs (it does not), etc. I even upgraded my Watch from a Series 6 to a Series 8 during this time, setting the Series 8 up as a new device, and the issue has carried over. So it seems like something is broken in watchOS that has carried over through a few different versions.

There was a thread of other people experiencing this issue, but it was closed down.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253532381

The only other thing of note is that my network is a multi wireless access point network. Not set up as a mesh, just multiple wireless APs from Ubiquiti. A common thread in the thread linked above (no pun intended) was mesh or multi-WAP environments.

Posting this thread in hopes of gathering more info or finding a fix, as Apple Support always has a Senior Advisor offer to file a report for engineering, promising to get back to me, but then I never hear back.