Figured it out, this was just a silly developer mistake. I had a web link set up in my AndroidManifest similar to the url I was trying to open from inside the app, so basically every time I try to launch the URL nothing would happen. Opening the URL from outside the app would just launch the app but since the app is already open nothing happens if you're not handling web links/deep links.

Reason why it didn't work on app downloaded from play store is because I had verified the weblink domain and allowed share credentials. The app therefore came already set up to open such links by default. When installing a debug/release apk you need to set the app as the default to open such links instead of a browser.