Indeed, everything you report fits with the bug. Any recovery built on the “bugged” build is reported to fail too - it does not work for me on Samsung A3!
The /e/ recovery, while developed to be optional with /e/ is not required. OTA updates work fine with my TWRP. You should be offered an update to e-0.19 before long, I do not have the recovery update ticked. I hope you can now get on with enjoying the /e/ experience.
The failure to login seems to be experienced by many new users! My recommended solution will work.