PHP7.4 not running on apache2

I'm running trying to run php7.4 on an Apache2. For some reason, when I try to run any use any php scripts in my code, they do not run, and all that is shown is the comment.

What I have in my code is this:

<?php                                                                                                                  
include("developers.php");                                                                                             
?> 

However, what shows up on the html source when loaded in a browser is this:

<!--?php
include("developers.php");
?--!>

I've tested this with multiple different scripts, so I do not believe that it is any issue with the php itself. I also installed php7.4, as well as libapache2-mod-php7.4. I also enabled the php7.4 module in apache2. Furthermore I have tried multiple different .htaccess and apache2.conf configurations, including adding

<FilesMatch "\.php$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

and

<FilesMatch "/.php$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

I noticed that when I did not include the <FilesMatch> tags, then the php code will run, however then the page itself breaks, and the javascript and css on my page does not run properly.

I also commented out this section in the php7.4.conf:

# Running PHP scripts in user directories is disabled by default
#
# To re-enable PHP in user directories comment the following lines
# (from <IfModule ...> to </IfModule>.) Do NOT set it to On as it
# prevents .htaccess files from disabling it.
#<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
#    <Directory /home/*/public_html>
#        php_admin_flag engine Off
#    </Directory>
#</IfModule>

I am running my server on Debian 11, if that helps.

Can anyone help me with this?

NOTE: This question was originally on StackOverflow, however I was told by a user there to repost it here, as it is offtopic for StackOverflow.

Also none of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12828163/why-are-my-php-tags-converted-to-html-comments https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5121495/php-code-is-not-being-executed-but-the-code-shows-in-the-browser-source-code PHP not being parsed in apache2, php module is installed and enabled answer my question.

I found several other answers to similar questions as well, which I won't link here due to not being able to find all the links now, but I couldn't find anything of use.

Had a similar problem. PHP works in terminal but apache2 doens't seems to parse it. reinstalled all the application again but nothing worked.

then i saw the apache2.conf file where it says

IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.conf

it was loading files from mods-enabled folder. when i did ls -l , i realised there was a broken symlink. unlinked it and created a new symlink for the installed php version and it all worked again.