Works with Alexa smart plugs connection issues

Hello All, I recently purchased a bunch of Works with Alexa smart plugs thinking I might be able to interface it to home assistant. These are YNF brand plugs that I got off aliexpress and packaging seems to indicate a BLE mesh protocol. But I cant seem to communicate with these plugs using a BLE mesh gateway that I have or using an ESP8266 BLE gateway. Are these Works with ALexa IOTs restricted to Alexa only?