Debian buster: package firmware-realtek installed, rtl8192eu wifi dongle USB adapter not showing up as network interface

I am trying to make a Wi-Fi USB adapter working, to no avail. The dongle is a TP-Link WN821N, which has a Realtek rtl8192eu chip. I cannot change it and will soon loose my wired connection due to choices of my employer. When inserted, I get the following output from dmesg:

[12881.857485] usb 1-1.6: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
[12881.970614] usb 1-1.6: New USB device found, idVendor=2357, idProduct=0107, bcdDevice= 2.00
[12881.970617] usb 1-1.6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[12881.970618] usb 1-1.6: Product: 802.11n NIC
[12881.970619] usb 1-1.6: Manufacturer: Realtek
[12881.970620] usb 1-1.6: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

and here is the relevant output of usb-devices:

$ usb-devices|grep -C 4 Realtek
T:  Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=05 Cnt=03 Dev#=  7 Spd=480 MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=2357 ProdID=0107 Rev=02.00
S:  Manufacturer=Realtek
S:  Product=802.11n NIC
S:  SerialNumber=00e04c000001
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=500mA
I:  If#=0x0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 5 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=(none)

however there's no network interface coming up

$ lspci -knn |grep -i net -A2
00:19.0 Ethernet controller : Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:1502] (rev 04)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (Lewisville) [8086:2008]
Kernel driver in use: e1000e
Kernel modules: e1000e

also, ip a only shows the ethernet interface, and iw dev has no output. My uninformed guess is that the system cannot find a driver for this particular dongle. I do have the non-free firmware-realtek package installed:

$ dpkg -l|grep realtek
ii  firmware-realtek                              20190114-2                              all          Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters

and there should be something related to rtl8192eu inside:

$ dpkg -L firmware-realtek |grep rtl8192eu
/lib/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8192eu_fw.bin
/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8192eu_nic.bin
/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8192eu_wowlan.bin

$ apt-cache show firmware-realtek|grep -i rtl8192eu
* Realtek RTL8192EU Bluetooth firmware (rtl_bt/rtl8192eu_fw.bin)
* Realtek RTl8192EU non-WoWLAN firmware (rtlwifi/rtl8192eu_nic.bin)
* Realtek RTl8192EU WoWLAN firmware (rtlwifi/rtl8192eu_wowlan.bin)

$ grep -r rtl8192eu /lib/modules/4.19.0-20-amd64/
Binary file /lib/modules/4.19.0-20-amd64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtl8xxxu/rtl8xxxu.ko matches

however I do not have a module named rtl8192eu:

$ sudo modprobe rtl8192eu
modprobe: FATAL: Module rtl8192eu not found in directory /lib/modules/4.19.0-20-amd64

and while I can load rtl8xxxu instead, it still does not make any new interface appear, both lspci and ip a keep showing only ethernet, and iw dev shows nothing. I am now faced with a hard choice: debug this, buy another dongle with my own money, or switch jobs. - I strongly prefer a solution based on firmware-realtek, or another maintained package, over compiling drivers from github. - I am willing to upgrade to Debian 11 bullseye if needed, as I was planning to do that anyway. - I wonder if there were some installation steps where I said that I will not ever need wifi. Can you help?