Smellbag0_0
You were not playing without an EA account, you're making exactly the point in this case actually.
as you know w playstation account can only be linked to one ea account in its lifetime
This is inaccurate and may be what's causing some confusion. You could only have one PlayStation account attached to an EA account (not the other way around), but it's always been possible to unlink that and link it to a different EA account, provided that new EA account had never been linked to a PlayStation account before. Here are the current guidelines, which have relaxed that restriction a bit more.
What has happened here is that your PlayStation was linked to one EA account when you were originally playing back in 2019, however it was later linked to this EA account instead - which was created in 2023, from what you mentioned. This EA account never had a different PlayStation account linked before the one connected now, which is why that was possible at the time.
Since you were playing Apex on PlayStation in 2019, you're absolutely right that you were connected to an EA account - it just wasn't this one. If that's the same PlayStation account, that means it was was unlinked from one EA account and linked to this one instead once this account was created.