It seems to be working just the same as before. Maybe it's interacting poorly with a phone feature of yours like Battery Saver or something? I also think my Pixel 5 is like worse at a few of these things than my Pixel 2 so who knows.
And although on one hand going from being at same place for hours if not days (home during covid), and then in just 10-15min reaching another place without any or with really bad cellular reception could be messing with optimizations of location sharing.
I recall few situations where both wife and I were next to each other, both phones running google maps at the moment, each hitting on refreshing/retrying getting the other ones location - and thing still showing us as currently offline.