Help me debug a Laravel Sail Database Connection Issue

Job ID: 33247914

Budget: $10 – $30 USD

I keep getting the "SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused" error. I have tried just about every relevant suggestion and after spending about 45 hours on this, cannot get ANYWHERE with Sail/Docker.

I installed Sail on a pre-existing project using:
php artisan sail:install
php artisan sail:publish

In Ubuntu (running Windows WSL2): I've tried:
sail build --no-cache
sail up -d

But alas, still:
SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused (SQL: select * from...

At one point, I was able to access the mysql cli and verify there was a database with the correct name, but the HTTP requests just weren't being accepted. However, after reinstalling sail a few times and changing environment variables, I can no longer do this either, as I get the mysql cli error:
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'

I need someone who develops often with Laravel Sail (preferably on Windows with Ubuntu experience) to assist me in solving this database error.
Related categories: PHP Linux MySQL Ubuntu Laravel