Prompted by the comments to a recent answer by YCor to a related question (here), I'd like to ask the following:

Q. Does every cancellative duo semigroup embed into a group?

A (multiplicatively written) semigroup $S$ is cancellative if, for every $a \in S$, right and left multiplication by $a$ are both injective functions on $S$; and it is duo if $aS = Sa$ for all $a\in S$.

By a famous example of Mal'cev [Math. Ann. 113 (1937), No. 1, 686-691], not every cancellative semigroup is embeddable into a group; thus, one might preliminarily ask whether Mal'cev's example is duo. (EDIT: it follows from Pace Nielsen's answer below that Mal'cev's example is not duo.) On the other hand, it is folklore (and easy to prove) that a commutative semigroup embeds into a group if and only if it is cancellative. Duo semigroups lie halfway between the commutative and non-commutative worlds; it therefore seems natural to inquire whether they are closer to one or the other when it comes to embeddability.