Continuing with my struggles, I checked:
ls /var
...and it showed a new crash directory. Within the:
ls /var/crash
...there was a nginx-custom.0.crash file, I assume, left over from when I ran:
wget -qO wo wordops.se/tup && sudo bash wo # install WordOps
...because it wasn't there before.
In fairness, I've been trying both ee and wo commands and have found that not all of the commands are interchangeable; at least not on a previously existing ee configuration.
When I ran:
ee stack purge --nginx
ee stack install --nginx
...I wasn't getting the correct version of nginx, but when I ran:
ee stack purge --nginx
wo stack install --nginx
...I got the correct version of nginx and the 502 Bad Gateway error went away entirely.