Uncaught Error: This socket is closed. MQTT connectivity issues

@Gordon

You might be hitting a classic Espruino USB issue here. What happens
if you power it from a USB Wall supply or Power Bank?

I apologize for overlooking your first question. I used an external power source and using my original code that I posted to this thread worked as expected. To double check this again I hooked the power source back to my computers usb port and after a few msgs sent back and forth the espruino stopped responding until I connected back to the IDE so the console.log can dump to the screen.

However, even though the ping error hasn't come back, it still bugs me :-/