It seems like when I go through the route of using the terminal to publish a signed .aab instead, I dont get an error.

I followed this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfSVb_RR7X0

and as recommended by one of the commenter, I also looked through this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/maui/android/deployment/publish-cli?view=net-maui-9.0