With help from a fellow redditor, I found that this bug can be fixed by completely uninstalling the Oculus Home app, then placing the phone into the Gear VR causing it to automatically re-install Oculus Home app. Not sure why, but this fixed my problem.
That's up to you. It was technically never solved, I had to find a work around and it took a lot of digging to find. I just wanted to do my due diligence reporting it.