2-bulb ceiling fixture with 2 Kasa WiFi bulbs will not respond in iOS Smartthings

I have a ceiling light fixture, with two Kasa KL130 wi-fi bulbs in it, which i have set up as a group. I can turn the lights on and/or off from the ST app on my ZFold3 phone, my iPad, and various winfows laptops. I can turn the bulbs on individually from my iPhone 13 pro max, and the group button turns them off, but not on. If i go the that room’s page under the devices tab, there is an icon on the top of the pge that shows 2 feives in the room - clicking on that brings up a sub-screen that allows them to turn on and off together.

I am baffled by this situation. I have ATT Fibre 1000 service, and my wi-fi is via two ruckus unleashed poe APs. I am lookinf for that elusive ‘just works’ situation. Shold I scrap my bulbs and get something like the Nanoleaf EWssentials Matter bulbs and call it a day?

My Smarthome has only lighting and switches in it - no locks, valves, faucets, or senosrs/swecirty stuff, and I do not do voice-commands. Just want to be able to hit a button on a small switch or use a smartphone, tablet, lpatop or desktop as needed, to turn stuff on and off.

If you are able to control the lights from the ST app on other devices… you should try signing out/ and sign back in on the app with the issue.

Tried that a few times. cleard data cache, deleted, reimnstalled, logged out, then back in-- the usual stuff