In my forum, when a user opened a new topic, and others replayed to it, the avatars do not show (or appear) in the users’ column. Check this capture (is in spanish, but simple to understand)
No, it should be unrelated (although re-enabling the setting was a great idea to prevent broken images).
The avatar list will refresh – the corresponding job is just stuck somewhere in your large queue. Wait for the queue to be processed, or speed it up by launching more workers, and this problem (as well as other delays) will fix itself