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The simulated “brain” that simulates the heart is a simulation of the brain and the heart. Frankly I don’t think anybody wants to be a brain in a box, so if this ever worked at all we would be simulating the brain and the body.
There’s no distinction between a simulation that creates a brain that thinks it has a body, and a simulation that actually has a body. The human consciousness depends on the entire nervous system.
This seems reasonable. And, again, going off this statement, it renders your original statement below completely wrong:
Because then we don't need to simulate more than the brain; we just need to simulate a brain which also simulates a heart (as in, the simulated brain creates the qualia of feeling a heart, without the programmers actually simulating a heart). So whether or not programmers simulated a brain AND a heart (AND a stomach and any other organ one might say is involved in qualia or feelings) really doesn't matter for the question of whether or not a simulated brain can have qualia. A simulated brain could just simulate those things.
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