Raspberry Pi: cannot pair Bluetooth smart remote [migrated]

I am attempting to connect two different BlueTooth smart remotes that you can find online for <$10, that look like this:

to my Raspberry Pi 4 running Raspbian (Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)).

My connection attempts look like this:

$ sudo bluetoothctl
Agent registered
[CHG] Controller DC:A6:32:2A:5A:1C Pairable: yes

[bluetooth]# scan on
Discovery started
[CHG] Controller XX:A6:32:2A:5A:1C Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device XX:60:08:00:08:FF Device 1
...

I turn on pairing on the remote, and eventually I see

[NEW] Device 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D SmartRemote

I then do/get the following:

[bluetooth]# pair 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D
Attempting to pair with 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D
[CHG] Device 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D Connected: yes
Failed to pair: org.bluez.Error.ConnectionAttemptFailed

[bluetooth]# info 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D
Device 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D (public)
    Name: SmartRemote
    Alias: SmartRemote
    Appearance: 0x03c1
    Icon: input-keyboard
    Paired: no
    Bonded: no
    Trusted: no
    Blocked: no
    Connected: no
    LegacyPairing: no
    UUID: Human Interface Device    (00001812-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
    RSSI: -42

[bluetooth]# connect 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D
Attempting to connect to 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D
[CHG] Device 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D Connected: yes
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed le-connection-abort-by-local
[CHG] Device 9B:07:2C:85:94:7D Connected: no

I am able to connect these remotes to my Pixel phone on Android 15 without issue.

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

System environment:

$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"