Ok i think i figured it. I think the reason for update button not working was that my phone had not been rebooted since the update from Oct 13. So after the update the "reboot required" notification may have been dismissed without me actually rebooting the phone at that time.
This had resulted in me forgetting about rebooting later, and getting no more updates and no more notifications and no more feedback even when clicking the "check for update" button.
Again this demonstrates that some extra code needs to be written to give the user some feedback.
Please bring this to the attention of your devs.
@matchboxbananasynergy
@akc3n