Further to my HTTP troubles depicted above: I finally decided to try out the MQTT route. I installed the Mosquitto MQTT broker on my Centos 7 server, took out a Lets Encrypt certificate, adapted the Owntracks app on both Samsungs and Homey’s Location @ Presence app to work with my MQTT broker, and even installed Owntracks Recorder on Centos 7 (with some difficulty: no viable installation package at this stage other than Docker).
It all works like a charm now. Today I set up a geofence for “home” together wit a bunch of Homey flows and even that seems to work. Kudos for all the developers, and thanks for the support given in this thread: very helpful!