Setting up acme service on fw1 only, and having HA sync the certs to fw2 is working fine now.
A few other hints:
When adding the TXT records to your DNS, first check that each TXT record is live with these two tools:
https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#TXT/
$ dig -t txt _acme-challenge.fw.yourcomain.something
Note: it's safest to wait at least as long as the DNS timeout set on the TXT records. For ex. if you set the timeout to 7200, this means 2 hours. Any less than that and the old data may still be cached and cause an Acme verification failure.
Once all the TXT records are live, go ahead and hit the Renew button on the acme cert.
If the records are not properly set or not live yet you will get an error like this:
Verify error:DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up TXT for _acme-challenge.fw.yourcomain.something
If you get this error, you'll have to hit Issue on the cert and delete then add the TXT records with their new values given by the acme service and wait long enough for the old TXT records to be deleted from DNS and the new ones to be added. It will not work to hit Renew once you get the verification error. Hitting Renew will just keep generating the error below and eventually you'll be rate limited by the acme web service and have to wait some time before Issuing a new cert.
Unable to update challenge :: The challenge is not pending