It looks like IIS Application Initialization does not work with HTTPS. It would be helpful if the AddHttpsRedirection method supported an exclusion similar to this article:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2843964
Sorry, I see the article was referring to "Require SSL" settings in IIS. It shouldn't be anything in ASP.NET Core app because if request makes it this far it would cause app to start anyway.
It looks like IIS Application Initialization does not work with HTTPS. It would be helpful if the AddHttpsRedirection method supported an exclusion similar to this article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2843964