Ajax error 401 after successful login Laravel 8

Question

I have a Laravel 8 project based on auth bootstrap scaffolding. It uses a custom UserProvider that authenticates a user from another source (AWS user pool). The login process works just fine. However, subsequent Ajax calls to a route fail with error 401. Below are are the details.

Server side (config/auth.php)

'guards' => [
    'web' => [
        'driver' => 'session',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],
    'api' => [
        'driver' => 'token',
        'provider' => 'users',
        'hash' => false,
    ],
],
'providers' => [
    'users' => [
        'driver' => 'aws',
        'model' => App\Models\User::class,
    ],
]

Providers/AuthServiceProvider.php

public function boot()
{
    $this->registerPolicies();

    Auth::provider('aws', function ($app, array $config) {
        $awsProvider = new AwsUserProvider($app['hash'], $config['model']);
        
        return $awsProvider;
    });
}

routes/web.php

Route::get('ict-devices-table', [IctDataController::class, 'getAllDevices']);

Controllers/IctDataController.php

class IctDataController extends Controller
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware('auth');
    }

    public function getAllDevices()
    {
        // return json encoded data.
    }
}

Client side

As I mentioned, the login is successful, and the user gets redirected to the home page. On that page, the ajax request executes periodically to get the latest data from the 'ict-devices-table' That request returns error 401.

$.ajaxSetup({
    headers: {
        'X-CSRF-TOKEN': $('meta[name="_token"]').attr('content')
    }
});
$.ajax({
    'url': 'http://localhost:8000/ict-devices-table',
    'method': 'GET',
    'contentType': 'application/json',

}).done(function (inData) {
    //do something useful with the data.
});

The problem is that the controller never executes if auth middleware gets specified in the constructor. If it is not the getAllDevices method is called but Auth::check() returns false and Auth::user()is null.

However, one clue might be: The custom UserProvider class implements all UserProvider methods, and they get called during login, i.e., validateCredentials, retrieveById, etc. However, when the Ajax request gets made, none of those calls appear in the log. Any ideas why this happens and how to fix it?