You can use the redirect implementation but you will have to redirect to the iView for launching NWBC for HTML, otherwise the Logon Ticket won't be used since the iView is bound to the portal system object where you have configured use of Logon Tickets. Another option is to generate the portal URL using the NavigationTarget parameter so that the iView defined for NWBC for HTML is launched. If you want to get fancy you can even create a custom AppIntegrator iView that does a redirect to NWBC for HTML.
That's weird, it works for me including SSO.