So I emailed PM support and sent them screenshots, the next day, my iMessage & FT started working! They got activated and I’m still on my eSIM! I never had to buy a new SIM card.
You can select the person's contact on iPhone and then choose their apple ID to send via iMessage. The number is not working right now for me either.. looks like cellular issue, and causing the activation to fail for iMessage and FaceTime, so that is...