After trying multiple combinations, what really worked for me was :
- Install Hestia with Nginx and PHP-FPM ( no apache whatsoever)
- Copy the Laravel template in /usr/local/hestia/data/templates/web/nginx/php-fpm to another template called “MyTemplate” ( copy laravel.tpl to MyTemplate.tpl and laravel.stpl to MyTemplate.stpl )
- In the GUI, select that template for NGINX
- Save and Voila!