I'd like to be able to run KStars with Ekos simulator for camera on my work Windows PC to try framing for saving night time.
Work PC, of course, no Indi server connected and I'm just setting the CCD Simulator as Camera 1 as in below image:



but if I start Ekos I get failure on connecting to remote INDI server at localhost on port 7.624

Is there a way to set the simulators to work on WIndows without having an actual INDI server running?

No, the simulators are regular INDI "drivers" that require the server to run.