FC 26 FUT Online Co-op Bugged

My friend and I are trying the “Play with a Friend” option for squad battles, rivals, etc. and we can’t join or start lobbies to play online FUT together.

The party leader or ‘Captain’ is stuck on a “Waiting for friend” screen even though a notification pops up from the hub saying the friend joined the party. 
On the other end: The teammate joins the lobby and the ‘Captain’ is greyed out with text in their place saying ‘In Menus.’ After waiting 5-15 seconds, the teammate gets a message saying failed to join game session. Game session full or no longer available. 

We’ve tried everything; from leaving and rejoining parties, re-adding each other as EA friends, specifically joining invites from Xbox (as we are both on Xbox Series X/S), restarting the app, recommendations on Reddit (people found that starting a report and backing out sometimes fixes for PlayStation), etc. 

Is there any possible fix for this issue?