Kubernetes : dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connect: connection refused

Kubernetes uses a $KUBECONFIG file for connecting to clusters. It may be when provisioning your kops cluster, it didn't write the file correctly. I can't be sure as you haven't provided enough info.

Assuming this is the issue, and you only have a single cluster, it can be resolved like so:

# Find your cluster name
kops get clusters
# set the clustername as a var
clustername=<clustername>
# export the KUBECONFIG variable, which kubectl uses to find the kubeconfig file
export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/${clustername}
# download the kubeconfig file locally using kops
kops export kubecfg --name ${clustername} --config=~$KUBECONFIG

You can find more information about the KUBECONFIG file here