Cloud-Init script does not appear to work

Hello! I followed the guide to create a cloud-init script to get my initial configuration running…

#cloud-config
users:
  - name: adminuser (admins own user, no root or standard admin account, removed for security)
    ssh-authorized-keys:
	- ssh-rsa *ssh-public-key* admin-user-laptop (removed for security, no reason to have details openly hanging around if not needed.
	- ssh-rsa *ssh-public-key* admin-user-desktop (removed for security, no reason to have details openly hanging around if not needed.
    sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL']
    groups: sudo
    shell: /bin/bash
write_files:
  - path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    content: |
         Port 22*** (removed last numbers for security reasons)
         Protocol 2
         HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
         HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
         HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
         HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
         UsePrivilegeSeparation yes
         KeyRegenerationInterval 3600
         ServerKeyBits 1024
         SyslogFacility AUTH
         LogLevel INFO
         LoginGraceTime 120
         PermitRootLogin no
         StrictModes yes
         RSAAuthentication yes
         PubkeyAuthentication yes
         IgnoreRhosts yes
         RhostsRSAAuthentication no
         HostbasedAuthentication no
         PermitEmptyPasswords no
         ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
         X11Forwarding yes
         X11DisplayOffset 10
         PrintMotd no
         PrintLastLog yes
         TCPKeepAlive yes
         AcceptEnv LANG LC_*
         Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
         UsePAM yes
         AllowUsers adminuser (admins own user, no root or standard admin account, removed for security)

I took the liberty to remove some of the details in the script, as I see no reason to keep details that in itself is not harmful to others to know, but does not hurt removing either.

I’ve run the cloud-init on ubuntu 16.04 in the past, and it worked like a charm but was only for testing the code and be impressed by it. Now in the recent days, I’m unable to do a successful deploy with the same code, nothing changed. I’ve tried on both Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04. No dice.

It allows me to connect to normal port 22, with the root account and password supplied in an email, which then tells me that this cloud-init was not running at all. If it did, login in through root on SSH with the password supplied would be rejected instead of allowed.

I’m only getting connection refused on port 22** with the private counterpart of the public ssh keys.

Has something changed with CloudInit, or am I doing something wrong?