Sorry to reply to my own post but I have some new information and I thought it may help someone to help me. I'm not sure this is an MQX issue anymore. In the ISR it is checking for UART2_S1[RDRF] to be set. This is not happening (based on register inspection).
From what I gather, the FIFO on UART2 of the K11 is 1 byte in depth. I read the datasheet regarding RWFIFO[RXWATER] setting and how it affects RDRF. I have RXWATER set to 0x01 but the datasheet says this value must be set *less than* the FIFO size for the UART and greater than zero. This would be impossible for a FIFO 1 byte deep. In any case any help is appreciated, I must be mistaken about something.
Roy