HomeKit Bridge is no longer seen by Home app

Glad to hear that you were able to work it out!

I decided to move everything to the Home Remote app and get Siri control through the Shortcuts app. IMO, besides Siri control, there's nothing compelling about Apple's Home app anyway.

I must concede that I thought of another feature of Apple's Home.app for integration over the Shortcuts.app--it's available via Siri on macOS (whereas Shortcuts.app integration is only available on iOS). Not a huge thing, but it is a thing.