GCP Compute Engine VM with ESPv2 Challenges

Question

been asked to do something a little out of my comfort zone and realm of skills but looking to get some help here.

So we use quite of bit of data using OpenStreetMaps, and often times we get hit with some API call quotas. So instead decided to host the Nominatim server on an GCP VM. I was able to successfully get it set up on Ubuntu 22.04 using the following instructions.

Nominatim Install

I was got it up and running deploying it with Apache 2 (there was an option using nginx, and can switch to that). This was all new to me to apologies for any wrong terminology or verbiage. I got to a point where I can did really easy curl request using localhost:8080 and return results and everything so I felt I was good there. But the idea was to allow other developers to fetch the data through a REST API call.

Our biggest concern was directly exposing the external IP and so we felt GCP Cloud Endpoints with ESPv2 was our solution (open to others). I followed the instructions found here to get it going (wasn't sure what to change parameters and all):

Getting started with Cloud Endpoints for Compute Engine with ESPv2

Here where I had some issues, first I had to make an openapi.yaml file as that is what ESPv2 is needed to configure the endpoint and I feel like I got it right. But errors I commonly get when running API calls locally are either can't connect (I feel didn't do Cloud Endpoint correctly) or the the API doesn't support this request. I'm lost here and any help would be greatly appreciated. One thing I feel I think is a quick answer for someone is that when I deployed the docker instances need for the GCP Cloud Endpoint, it said it could deploy as port was already being listened by something else (Apache2). So I killed the process redeployed the docker and it look to be good. Is that normal, in that only one thing can listen and it should be the GCP Google Endpoint? Again everything relatively new, and I'm more experienced making the API calls and not exactly setting up the endpoint. I can provide any additional info. Thanks!