Hi,
You are making things too complicated for yourself...
You are switching multiple things, but possibly not the correct combinations...
A UEFI HDD\SSD needs to be a GPT drive... A Legacy HDD\SSD needs to be MBR... Both NTFS...
This is not interchangeable...
Same thing with the Flash Drive... A UEFI Installation drive needs to be GPT\FAT32...
A Legacy Installation drive needs to be MBR\NTFS..
Both of the above conditions need to be met for a particular installation... There is no mix and match option... You may also need to select a "UEFI Flash" or "Flash" in boot options...
This type of confusion is one of the primary drawbacks of the introduction of UEFI Bios, and why I try to stick to Legacy... I do use UEFI at times for testing stuff like this, and on my HP Laptop and tablet that came that way, but avoid it on my primary
desktop machines..
If you select your HDD as the boot device, it is Legacy.. Otherwise it would be WindowsBootManager...
It's hard to say what complications may have happened in one of your 1st attempts with both drives attached, but with the HDD removed you can make the SSD whatever you want...
Your attempts to put the SSD as a UEFI Boot Device may be failing due to the flash drive...
It may be that because of conflicting flash drive\bios issues that everything is there except for the boot files on the EFI partition... So no WindowsBootManager...
I'm thinking that without using RUFUS you might be out of luck fixing this issue...
One other option for Legacy Bios would be the Windows USB\DVD Tool to create the flash drive...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485
Your Legacy attempt failed as well... This may also be due to the installation media conflicting with your bios settings...
Personally, I actually use two different flash drives for my installations... One specifically for UEFI, and one specifically for Legacy... Both burned with RUFUS... I already mentioned why...
You should not need CSM enabled to see your SSD if it not required for the HDD... UNLESS the SSD had already been set up as a GPT drive... Having it enabled is not a bad thing... it just not be a requirement to see the SSD...
You mentioned changing stuff to make "Active"... This suggests to me that you are using 3rd party Disk Management Tools...
You also mentioned updating your Bios... That could easily cause to work differently now, than they did during your original installation on the HDD...