Found the culpit. PTB28 is not wired to the MB by default on S32K396-BGA-DC1. Instead it is wired to the PHY connector.
Changing pinout to using PTF0-3 for LPSPI2 works much better.
And I am guessing this is also why the other example does not work as there is a lot of PHY pins not connected to the MB connectors.
It is almost as if you have selected pinouts to make life extra hard in using your tools.