Wiping the entire flash appears to have fixed the problem. Not sure what got corrupted such that only the AP feature was broken but I am glad that it works again . Hopefully this will save some time for people who have the same problem in the future.

Hi, I'm currently working with two (ESP32D0WDQ6 based) TTGO T Display devices. I uploaded the arduino WiFiAccessPoint example sketch to both. One device works as expected and its access point can be seen from a laptop and mobile phone, the other one can not be seen from a laptop nor phone while it r...