Apple Watch Connectivity

Not sure if I haven’t got the app setup correctly or something isn’t working, but if I leave my phone and walk away (thus breaking the bluetooth connection between the watch and the phone) if I try to carry out an action on watch (actionable notification for example) it doesn’t work. If I walk back to my phone and the watch reconnects, it works immediately.

My watch is a GPS/eSIM enabled version, and I am clearly connected to the internet/network to get a notification, but I’m not sure if the watch app requires connection to the phone app to work fully? That’s how it seems.