I had the same experience with this chest. Tried drag and dropping kit and tools to hot bars but they did nothing. Tried right clicking the kit and tools in inventory, neither changed the interface to pick a target for disarming. If you close the inventory window after doing so, clicking the chest just opens it and the explosions go off. I looked around for a key thinking unlocking it might bypass the trap, but didn't find one.
Incidentally, despite this issue on the chest and one or two other chests/doors with the same behavior, I WAS also able to spot and disarm every single trap in the crypt. I had to save scum to disarm them all without burning through my available kits, but it worked. This chest and others like it seem to not be working right. I noted others during first play through, but didn't keep track. I will try this time.
Best guess on this is that there's a mix of things not WAI and players not knowing what to expect. This specific chest (and one or two others like it that I encountered) may be bugged in a way that you don't get a "disarm" option when you right click. Could just be a bug here. That mechanic worked fine for me in the crypt and other places where traps worked similarly. IE) Disarming the trap directly or finding a button to do it. In terms of not knowing what to expect I mean that all traps aren't handled the way I just mentioned. I like what Larian is doing, there. It's another layer of gameplay that I find enjoyable. I figured out that, for example, the floor grates in the swamp can't be disarmed (at least, I didn't find a way, maybe there was a passive I missed for a button or lever). They had to be covered so they couldn't trigger, and that was just as satisfying as finding a button to turn them off.
