@rennydann The starter pack is a bundle Origin sells that consists of the base game, Late Night, and High-end Loft Stuff. It shouldn't be necessary to own this bundle to play Ambitions. I take it the base game and your other packs show in your Origin library as well? Perhaps Origin itself is acting up. You can clear its cache, or even uninstall and reinstall Origin itself, which would not affect your installed games.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/
I'm not clear on whether you installed via disc with an Origin assist or entirely through Origin. Disc and digital installs don't always play nicely together, and sometimes it's necessary to uninstall the disc version of TS3, clean the computer's registry (either manually or with a tool like Piriform's CCleaner), and reinstall the Origin digital download. If you pull your entire TS3 game folder out of Documents and store it somewhere safe, it won't be affected by the uninstall and reinstall.
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/the-sims/the-sims-3/manually-uninstalling-the-sims-3/
In any event, if the launcher won't let you play with Ambitions, you'll likely need to contact EA customer support to get this sorted out. Someone on that end can look at your account, tell you if anything is off, and reset it if needed; no one here can even access your account details.
https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/
