Photos would greatly help us see what you're talking about.

When you place houseplants outside, they need to be slowly acclimated to full sun. Starting with a week or so of strictly open shade and then moving one hour at a time to full sun.

Leaves grown in an indoor environment, greenhouse or shadehouse cannot handle fun sun.

Your plant would love full sun if acclimated.

I added a photo, it looks a little squished down in the photo. Thank you! I am going to try and get the other guy acclimated once I figure out what I should do with this one :(

No need to cut the trunk if you only wanna grow branches. Filtered sunlight outdoor, high cec soil, and good fertilizer will boost root to it's peak performance and produce branches. You can try that next growing season.

The sites where the leaves fell off the trunk will not grow new leaves, but there is a little node/bud just above each spot the stem of the leaf was attached that has the potential to grow into a new branch with leaves.

I say "potential" because persuading any of those nodes to activate and grow is a complex issue. Try searching about how to get FLF's to branch on this forum. As said above getting it into peak condition will help. Good luck!