This looks like a possible alternative to VPNs etc to access a simple dashboard from the internet.
The app IoT MQTT Panel (I'm using the free tier) lets you create basic dashboards with charts, buttons, gauges etc, all having a similar appearance to Node-red dashboard widgets.
It sends and receives data over MQTT.
My first dashboard monitoring my Victorian conservatory
looks like this
On the Node-red end I just need to forward sensor data from local Mosquitto to a cloud based MQTT broker such as hivemq and to subscribe to that broker for input to NR from the app.