After some time trying to figure this out, found a working solution how to overcome the limitation :)
Replied with my answer below on stackoverflow, link in first email.
In case anyone will face same issue as @KevinG here is my solution, since i found this topic trying to solve same issue, after thinking for some time, i have found the way how to overcome the limitation, that stats can be called only locally from machine/server that jetty-runner is running on.
First setup nginx on same server/machine where you are running jetty-runner. Make sure you use proxy forward in nginx config to forward all traffic to jetty-runner (localhost:8080). Your nginx by default should be listening on port 80. Open http://localhost:80 from your host server/machine/local pc and nginx will forward your request to jetty-runner and will return reply. Same will work with /stats/. Open http://localhost:80/stats/ on your host/local pc and you will reach stats page of jetty-runner.
nginx config:
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
## default location ##
location / {
access_log off;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}