Cannot party up with cross-platform friends (while playing on Steam)

My xbox friends are online, none of us have any privacy setting that would make them appear offline or hinder our ability to invite or party up with each other, yet we appear offline to each other and cannot party up or play together. Attempting to join via xbox gamebar or invite each other via xbox gamebar also results in no invite arriving on either end despite each of us appearing online and in Apex through xbox gamebar. They don't even appear as one of my friends in Apex legends despite us being able to play together just the other week, we have not blocked or unadded each other, it's like neither of us exist to the other person. One of my other friends can see ME online and can send me invites but they never arrive on my end and I can never see that friend online or invite him. I cannot even unadd or re-add these friends because they don't appear on my friends list at all, and searching their gamer tags in the "search for friends" tab in apex legends itself says that no one by that gamer tag exists despite me spell checking it multiple times. I really only touch this game to play with friends so none of us have played in several weeks because its just not worth it if we can't play together. I know this has been a bug in the past, but for whatever reason, the second or third to last patch brought it back. If there's anything I/we need to do on our end please let us know because we're craving some ranked before the season end.