It would appear that both magisk and APatch are currently dealing with their own set of problems that are effecting boox (and others)
Here's Apatch unlimited super user issue I have
https://github.com/bmax121/APatch/issues/400
Here's the Magisk issue I have
https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/issues/9319
They both seemingly have to do with the kernel so I think to fix this i'd need for a fix to be pushed to magisk or Apatch or for some brave soul to create a custom kernel with one of the fixes I'm predicting in the Apatch thread.
Both root methods have root in shell via adb and have whoami running fine.
Also apps are showing that I have a unlocked bootloader