I need to validate but I expect many of these tools will not handle piped input properly, use event loops or otger tools that expect keyboard input as events not just streams. Other prosaic applicationisms abound- How does one send cursor up, or F10 to get into a memu, to an app via stdin? The paradigm falls appart, & TUI's as distonctly different elements than regular cli tools rears it's ugly head.
Tools like espeak and dc that you cite fall into the conventional cli-tools camp. By compare mamy of the TUI tools we see here have their own autocomplete systems embedded in the program, multiple screens, full terminal layouts, multiple on-screen focus-able areas.
I'm not sure why you need HTTP or dbus for control. Just use stdin and stdout. For example:
This works with other CLI programs. For example (make sure you have dc and espeak):