Need some help figuring out what I'm missing

Hello all! 

I've made my way through all the basic lessons and I'm almost done with the Blues part 2 lessons, and I've learned a lot of really fun patterns and licks, but I feel like I'm missing something foundational that I should have by now. I'm not really understanding how different licks fit with one another, if that makes sense. I understand that they're likely in different keys, but I don't understand how to know what pattern is in what key. I think I must have missed something in some earlier lessons. Could anybody point me in the right direction? 

Thanks! 

Congrats on working through the courses!  It sounds like you are missing some fundamental music theory concepts to integrate all those licks & ideas you've learned.  So posting this in the music theory forum is exactly the right decision.

Try working through this collection of tutorials on the basics of improvisation.  

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/learning-to-improvise

These start relatively simple, but get more complex quickly.  The essential idea is that improvisation and all musical forms are a process of finding the key (meaning the appropriate scale to use), targeting chord tones and then making musical phrases (i.e.: melodies, licks, lines).  These lessons are done in a generic style because the ideas are applicable to all styles of music.

After that you might benefit from these tutorials on how to use these music theory concepts in a blues style context.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial/217/

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial/2380/

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial/2768/

Hope that helps.  Please ask more if you have more questions.  Keep practicing!