Buddy I'm not following at all. The letsencrypt files are in the .well-known which are inside of the /var/www/nodebb webroot.
I added the try_files $uri =404;
It says "The client lacks sufficient authorization"
I've been through this procedure at least a dozen times now. Minutes prior to attempting with nodebb, I used it with discourse & flarum without issue. There's some sort of goof, but I'm not seeing it yet.
Thanks for the reply.
addition:
Okay it's fixed. The verification fails if using a symlink. I should have realized that wouldn't work. Just another goof. Removed the symlink and moved the folder.