Mechanisms that govern the complex gas flows within the galactic disk and across the disk-halo interface are a crucial ingredient for understanding the evolution of galaxies and their star-formation histories. An important diagnostic for such flows is the spatially resolved gas-phase metallicity distribution. What can we then learn about the galaxy's history based on its current metallicity map? Do positive radial gradients imply close passage of a neighbour or metal recycling from the CGM? I will attempt to answer these questions using both FOGGIE cosmological zoom-in simulations as well as JWST-PASSAGE observations, to bridge that gap between simulations and observations. Comparing the spatially resolved metallicity and SFR maps from the JWST observations, and correlating them with integrated stellar masses, we find a clear trend at z~2. The metallicity-SFR slope---which likely hints at timescales for metal-mixing due to stellar feedback---increases with increasing stellar mass.