1) Enabled Cloudflare.
For the record, it really did take a full 48 hours for the DNS to consistently resolve.
2) I discovered that even though Chevereto showed my storage size within my account settings, that does not include the program and other files. So, I was just at/over my server account limit. (9,000 images). So, it did not hurt to upgrade from 35GB TO 50GB and from 1GB RAM to 2 GB. 😉
3) I turned on Under Attack for a few days.
4) Now the proxy works. I think that helped!
Things are now running smooth and resource use is acceptable.
So, I concur with the CloudFlare recommendation. It just takes time and learning curve.