I was having this issue. Turns out if you have disabled Docker Desktop Launcher you can no longer make use of the UI.
Switch this back on under Settings → Apps → Startup and reboot.
I checked now. Mine is disabled and I have no problem with the Docker Desktop GUI. That flag should only affect whether Docker Desktop starts automatically when you log in to Windows. This is what can be changed from Docker Desktop as well. DD just changes the same setting. I think I installed Docker Desktop from the release page, but it is also available from Microsoft Store. How did you install it?
This one worked for me
-
Stop WSL
wsl --shutdown -
Delete Docker WSL distros (safe, Docker recreates them)
wsl --unregister docker-desktop
wsl --unregister docker-desktop-data -
Start Docker Desktop again
It will recreate fresh WSL instances.