Rust servers stall from time to time due to AI - the console stays open and it does not shut down, stays on the server browser, but players cannot connect and RCON wouldn’t work. There are a few options to check first of all.
1. Killing all NPCs
You may consider killing all NPCs with a plugin or commands which could get rid of the “buggy” ones - worth trying once.
2. Disabling AI movement
You can disable the movement entirely by setting nav_disable 1 in server.cfg or as one of your startup arguments.
3. Changing the map
If you have just wiped recently, it could be better to just change the map as soon as possible - in most cases the NPCs are just stuck on certain maps and/or their areas, and therefore changing the seed would fix it.