How do you tile a window in Awesome Window Manager?

I'm apparently missing some knowledge that is very fundamental about Awesome Window Manager . I'm using the default configuration that comes with Debian 11 and for the past two weeks I've been using the default floating layout. Now, I'm ready to venture into utilizing its tiling features, but toggling the top-left layout button has no affect on the layout of my windows. Even when I close all windows, and launch them from scratch, they do not launch into tiles no matter what layout I choose (beforehand) via that layout-toggler-button. I've watched videos of other people doing this, but (for me) the windows never tile. What I'm I missing here?