Anyone had much success with Gadgetbridge and Bangle 2 ?

Hmm, that's a pain about the pedometer. That's with large font, but no progress display?

Do I need gadgetbridge installed or does full screen notifications suffice. Its not very clear if Full Screen Notifications is all you need.

You do need gadgetbridge and fullscreen notifications (and not normal notifications, which gets automatically installed if you install Gadgetbridge first), so that could be your issue maybe?