[BUG]: Blank plot in Jupyterlab when plotly is installed in different virtual env from jupyter server

[mgunyho]

Description

I am using plotly in an environment managed by JupyterHub. I created a fresh virtual environment (independent from the one managed by JH, which I don't want to modify). I installed plotly in that virtual environment and added it as a kernel to Jupyter by running ipython kernel install in the virtual environment. However, if I open a Jupyter notebook with this kernel and try to create a plot, I get a blank figure. There is no Javascript error in the browser console.

Screenshots/Video

Steps to reproduce

This can be reproduced by creating a clean virtual environment with only Jupyter in it and then another one which contains plotly:

mkdir /tmp/plotly-issue
cd /tmp/plotly-issue

# ~equivalent to the environment managed by JupyterHub
uv init --bare jupyter-env
cd jupyter-env
uv add jupyterlab

cd ..
uv init --bare kernel-env
cd kernel-env
uv add ipykernel plotly nbformat # "Mime type rendering requires nbformat"
uv run ipython kernel install --prefix /tmp/plotly-issue/jupyter-env/.venv/ --name kernel-with-plotly

cd ../jupyter-env
uv run jupyter lab

Then, in jupyterlab, create a new notebook with the kernel kernel-with-plotly and run

from plotly import graph_objects as go
fig = go.Figure()
fig.add_trace(go.Bar(x=[1, 2, 3], y=[1, 3, 2]))
fig.show()

Notes

The figure works correctly if I replace the last line with fig.show(renderer="notebook"). However, the blank figure was very confusing and it took me several hours to find this solution. Additionally, I found a lot of online discussion pointing to this troubleshooting page: https://plotly.com/python/troubleshooting/ which mentions Jupyter / Jupyterlab in the introduction, but there is no section related to Jupyter in the main text. I think this page should be updated with some additional information on Jupyter.