Status Issue is not yet resolved.
Some Additional information. After having reported this issue and after having unresolved and still not working for a few days, I did install Podman Desktop and got Podman to successfully install, initialize, build an image from a Docker file, and run a container with that image. So I think... my WSL is working... I hope this supplemental helps with the analysis of this reported potential bug.
I do still utilize Rancher Desktop SUSE (on my personal windows pc) and let me know if there is any other information I can provide to help with the troubleshooting of the issue and product improvement.
Cheers