Unwrapping in Blender goes as follow. Switch to edit mesh node (Tab) > go to edge selection mode (2) to select edge loops alt+ click or click start edge and then Cntrl+click an end edge or just (shift+click) edges one by one. > use ctrl+E to open edge menu and "mark seams" those selected edges. Or you can just select UV…
You can extract faces where you gonna place those instances . one face for each. Make them separate object to parent instanced object too. A kind of old way. Or you can use geometry nodes . Extract a curve from an edge loop and use that curve to distribute points on it: "curve to points" node . Then "instance on points"…