I've tried "DateTime->now(timezone=>"EST5EDT") and it blows up with errors.

As ever, those errors (which you've decided to omit from your post for some unknown reason) hold the clue:

$ perl -MDateTime -e 'print DateTime->now(timezone=>"EST5EDT")->hour'
Found extra parameters passed to _check_named_from_epoch_params: [time
+zone]

Trace begun at (eval 241) line 155
DateTime::_check_named_from_epoch_params('epoch', 1680269935, 'timezon
+e', 'EST5EDT') called at /usr/local/lib64/perl5/DateTime.pm line 493
DateTime::from_epoch('DateTime', 'epoch', 1680269935, 'timezone', 'EST
+5EDT') called at /usr/local/lib64/perl5/DateTime.pm line 545
DateTime::now('DateTime', 'timezone', 'EST5EDT') called at -e line 1
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Found extra parameters passed to _check_named_from_epoch_params: [timezone] tells us that it isn't expecting timezone there, so you can go back to the doc and discover that what you actually need is time_zone instead. See the difference:

$ perl -MDateTime -e 'print DateTime->now(time_zone=>"EST5EDT")->hour'
9
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Always include the full text of the error message in your post. Even if you don't understand it, someone else probably does.