I just tried briefly to make the update you suggested to the debug file, however it is still not working.
You shouldn't modify the debug file (doesn't hurt if you try, just won't do anything); it's made for you to look at and identify a possible issue.That's why I recommended to output its contents with cat; but probably, tail -100 debug.log would be a better idea; no need to output the whole file.
I'll need to dive in a bit more tonight once my kid is asleep, maybe try again from scratch. Thanks again for your help with a noobie like myself trying to fully utilize my apollo 
No worries; I'd love for people to get Core Lightning and Electrum on their Apollos, even if they don't want to replace the base OS! Troubleshooting in forum threads can help future readers as well.