nervousball hi
Many apps rely on Sandboxed Google Play for notifications, so yes, you may need to allow unrestricted battery for it to get notifications in a timely manner. Some apps implement it themselves but may use Sandboxed Google Play for it if available (one example is Signal).
For location, are you outside with a clear view of the sky? GNSS needs that to find the satellites.
On the stock OS or other OS', you may have been using Google's or Apple's network location service which helps for when you're indoors and GNSS isn't working.
If you're outdoors and have a clear view of the sky, GNSS will work and you don't need to rely on network location.
If you want to use Google's network location on GrapheneOS, you can follow https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play-configuration. Using it means sending your location to Google.
In the near future, GrapheneOS will be getting it's own initial implementation of a network location service.
It will initially support using Apple's network location directly or through a GrapheneOS proxy.
We plan to have an option to download regional databases so you can use network location fully offline and privately.