It's not the Pico per se that works or does not with the ESP8266, it's the ESP8266 wifi module that has required slight tweaks to work with the different ESP8266 firmware versions out there.
So you might need to try the different modules, but having said that, you can also change the firmware of the ESP8266 either by flashing via the Pico or via your USB-TTL adapter.
Espruino is a JavaScript interpreter for low-power Microcontrollers. This site is both a support community for Espruino and a place to share what you are working on.
It's not the Pico per se that works or does not with the ESP8266, it's the ESP8266 wifi module that has required slight tweaks to work with the different ESP8266 firmware versions out there.
So you might need to try the different modules, but having said that, you can also change the firmware of the ESP8266 either by flashing via the Pico or via your USB-TTL adapter.