After reboot with the new version I got broken WiFi. Had to reinstall the old version (Feb10) from daedalus. But this is not Devuan's issue now, so the original issue is solved I guess.

Well... Yes, but why does apt think that this non-existent version is a candidate for upgrade? 
Here's the apt policy firmware-iwlwifi output:

firmware-iwlwifi:
  Installed: 20230210-5
  Candidate:   20230515-3
  Versions table:
     20230515-3 500
        500 http://devuan.sedf.de/merged excalibur/non-free-firmware amd64 Packages
        500 http://devuan.sedf.de/merged excalibur/non-free-firmware i386 Packages
 *** 20230210-5 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Shouldn't apt update get the actualized information about available candidates?

You didn't tell what DE you use, so assuming that you use XFCE as the Devuan's default DE, I think it's probably XFCE specific issue. Just tested it in MATE DE by adding UK layout and it works fine. 
XFCE has a config file for keyboard layouts in ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/keyboard-layout.xml. Check out the contents of this file. I think it should have uk in the layout property field, something like this <property name="XkbLayout" type="string" value="uk"/>. Or <property name="XkbLayout" type="string" value="uk,us"/> if you have both UK and US layouts.

I would like to add some more details on the issue and suggest a slightly different solution.
Since the issue is caused by the nvidia-persistenced package alone, I believe that the workaround with --no-install-recommends is not an optimal one. User likely might want to get the other recommended packages for nvidia-driver to be installed. The nvidia-settings (GUI tool for NVidia driver settings) is one of the recommended ones, for example. Also, for Steam-Proton the nvidia-driver-libs:i386 is required, and it is also marked as recommended for nvidia-driver (assuming that the user have enabled i386 architecture before the driver installation). And the linux kernel headers along with nvidia DKMS package (both are required to build the driver module during the installation)) are also in the recommended.

So, instead of using --no-install-recommends I think the better option would be to just not install nvidia-persistenced alone, and we can do that with apt-mark. 

To prevent the installation of nvidia-persistenced and it's i386 version (if you have i386 packages enabled) do this:

$ sudo apt-mark hold nvidia-persistenced nvidia-persistenced:i386

After this you can just install the driver as usual. All the dependencies will be pulled and installed except the nvidia-persistenced.

In my case with Devuan Chemaera and 1050Ti all I need to do to install NVidia drivers and get them ready for Steam-Proton is:
1. Enable i386 packages for Steam and nvidia-driver-libs:i386 which is required by Steam:

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

$ sudo apt update

2. Put the problematic packages on hold:

$ sudo apt-mark hold nvidia-persistenced nvidia-persistenced:i386

2. Install the driver meta-package. It pulls all the other required packages like DKMS build tools, i386 libs, etc. recommended so they are getting installed automatically.

$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver

3. The last step is Steam:

$ sudo apt install steam

Probably in the case of the legacy 390 driver the steps for headers and DKMS were required. In case of current 460 driver everything is installed automatically thanks to the recommended packages auto installation process.