environment Variables are not set or ignored (no error thrown)

environmentVariables gets ignored:

acrName: ${{ env.REGISTRY_NAME }}
acrPassword: ${{ secrets.VIDEOCONTENTMODERATIONBACKEND_REGISTRY_PASSWORD }}
acrUsername: ${{ secrets.VIDEOCONTENTMODERATIONBACKEND_REGISTRY_USERNAME }}
containerAppName: ${{ env.CONTAINER_APP}}
resourceGroup: ${{ vars.RESOURCE_GROUP }}
yamlConfigPath: deployment/aca_container_apps/${{ env.CONTAINER_APP}}.yml
imageToDeploy: ${{ env.REGISTRY_NAME }}.azurecr.io/${{ env.CONTAINER_APP}}:latest
disableTelemetry: True
environmentVariables: AZURE_SPEECH_REGION="eastus" DEBUG_MODE="False" AUDIO_API_TYPE="Azure" VISION_API_TYPE="Azure" AZURE_OAI_EMBED_MODEL="text-embedding-3-large"

it does not throws any error and it seems that with this configuration they get ignorted, deployment suceeds but the container does not have env attached. (i am also using secrets as below and adding a space in between, but nothing)

 
AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING=secretref:azure-storage-connection-string AZURE_OPENAI_EMBED_MODEL_ENDPOINT=secretref:azure-openai-embed-model-endpoint

is there any specific configuration or settings i should use so that the env variables get set?