Ok, so today (about 4 months after opening a ticket about this), a TP-Link technician connect to my machine to check out this behavior, after I heard repeatedly that it just should work, are you really logged in as admin, etc.

Guess what, they did make cloud access required for this function since 4.3.5 and they did 'forget' to mention it in the change log of 4.3.5, sorry for the inconvenience.

Leaves a really bad taste in my mouth

yeah , new user here ( just setup today ) 

I got it all linked together ,  then I expected to a FW upgrade on most devices and without cloud enabled BS , you can't do it in a simple way. 

apperently even undocumented change , is TP link on the way to be new Facebook , Google  ?

its a god damn FW update pull , requesting Cloud access for that is just completely reverse when people want to have the conform of just just not having cloud connectivity to their private network.  Everyday you hear 'big company hacked , so much stuff leaked, or worse they tried to keep it quiet,  etc....'   

and I get 'cloud access must be enabled' error on this new out of box controller 

Controller Version:

4.2.11

Model:

OC200 1.0

Firmware Version:

1.7.4 Build 20210118 Rel.72627

https://imgur.com/dtyeGQ9

voila I already 'fixed' something in the controller for Yall