Are you allowed to work in the US? (i.e. are you a US citizen, legal permanent resident, legally admitted refugee, etc?) If you are allowed to work, then yes, there are plenty of jobs out there for people with an Associate’s degree. Particularly vocational associate’s degrees, such as nursing, car mechanics, etc.
If you require work visa sponsorship, please be aware that the most common type of work visa (H-1B) requires at least a Bachelor’s degree. There are a handful of other work visas, but they are mostly for seasonal work (e.g. farm workers) or very specific specialty occupations (such as professional athletes or religious leaders).
Possible, yes. Likely, no. Selective public universities usually take a majority of their transfer students from in-state community college or other in-state universities. Besides, would you be able to pay out-of-state tuition at UCLA (currently about $60,000 per year)?
After 2 years at a community college, very few universities will require SAT scores for your transfer application. But yes, you can pay to take or re-take the SAT any time you want.
No, not really. If you transfer to a public university, there’ll be many community college transfer students such as yourself.