Passing HTML to Text Variable

Currently, I'm converting an old E-Learning course into Storyline/HTML5 and to save some time, I've created a custom JS solution to read in XML and send it to a text variable to be displayed on screen.

My solution works fine with the exception of one problem: Storyline doesn't work well with a lot of HTML tags. The biggest issue is that my two Storyline files (one for testing and one for production) act inconsistently. If I pass the players "<p>Here's a list</p><br><li>item 1</li><li>item 2</li>" the output is completely different and I have no idea why. In my published test file, the text displays on 2 lines of text with the p and li tags seemingly doing nothing. In the production file, the <li> items appear bulleted, however the text size shrinks a considerable amount.

Both text boxes have the exact same settings (Do not autofit & don't wrap text in shape) and as far as I can tell, when Storyline reads in the formatted text, it looses its HTML tags. When I try to change the CSS associated with P and LI elements it seems to do nothing. I've even tested with no HTML and the plain text is displayed fine.

If anyone can help me either get this working or even just understand why my two files may be acting inconsistently, please let me know. Thanks!