Got stung by a bee.... Would love to hear from other's experience

Sorry for the “clickbaity” title. I’ve searched for many hours and can’t find what I’m doing wrong.
I want use an Xbee3-24 for Zigbee, as the transmit power is highest(mesh I know, I have 8 other routers, still need a powerful coordinator, foil faced insulation whole house)

Latest version of HA, fresh install and my Xbee never shows as coordinator, only router. I did set the appropriate parameters in XCTU(form network, etc.) and loaded the zigbee integration, but the XBee only shows as router and won’t pair devices.Devices never show under devices, but I can see the join responses in the live log during pairing.

I did manage to get a Nortek totally setup and zigbee working, but want to use my Xbee as it’s much more powerful.