How do I make .desktop files launchable from outside of desktop?

Question

I have done the following:

1. I copied firefox.desktop from /usr/share/applications to ~/Desktop.

2. In Desktop, I right-clicked and selected Allow launching.

3. Repeated the same with many such .desktop files.

4. I created a new folder in Desktop called apps.

5. Moved all the .desktop files from ~/Desktop to ~/Desktop/apps.

The problem is that the .desktop files are no longer launchable inside the apps folder. By launchable, I mean when I click the .desktop file it actually launches instead of just opening the text file.

So how do I make them launchable?

This is an issue in Ubuntu 21.04 too. There are some improvements in 21.04, such as fixing drag and drop for copy, but this issue looks like it hasn't been fixed in 21.04.