Nginx is better is debatable and its all a personal choice afterall. I prefer Litespeed and Openlitespeed more than Nginx and Apache2 stack for its reliability, better performance, ease of use, full apache support which is widely used.
Nginx fails at large ecommerce sites. Nginx still doesn’t have support for HTTP3 QUIC protocol. Many useful features which otherwise are available in other web technology is behind paywall named Nginx Plus. A lot other negative aspects are there.
I am not saying Nginx is completely bad, but I will prefer it only if Litespeed/openlitespeed is not available for any reason my next immediate alternative choice would be Nginx itself.
Also, regarding this particular issue how can I reproduce the same in my test server? I will check it today.