DE10-Nano | Unable to use UART (Platform Designer)

The attached pictures describe my test design where I try to setup a UART link between the NIOS II and my laptop.

The UART core signals are exported to the top-level design, where they are routed to arbitrary pins. According the forum at the following link, it is okay for those exported UART signals (RX, TX) to be arbitrarily routed since the HPS is hardwired such that the UART RX/TX signals go to the FT232R (https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-SoC-And-CPLD-Boards-And/DE10-Nano-RX-TX-pin-assignment/m-p/690967#M14911).

In the NIOS II SBT, I configured the BSP settings to use the UART core as the STDIN and STDOUT.
However, when running the printf() function (picture 3, C code) nothing seems to actually travel through the UART:
1) The Tx LED on the DE10 nano does not flash (even if I push the reset button to restart the NIOS II program)
2) Nothing shows up on the Putty window of the laptop. (Whereas if I tap any key on my laptop, I can see the Rx LED on the DE10 nano flash.)

Does anyone know if I am missing a step or have something misconfigured? Thank you in advance!