Do you receive any error for those accounts? If not, try to remove the password saved for those accounts, restart and then when prompted insert the pass for those accounts. Will it work or will it show an error?

There appears to be no response at all if I put my cursor over the inbox for either icon, I get the circular spinning "thinking about it" icon in the top left, with my gmail or hotmail account name next to it. I removed all the relevant saved passwords but after a relaunch im not asked to input passwords but the circular icon is still there for both accounts... Its almost as if it cant contact google or microsoft servers...

I had pop3 Gmail on both versions (68 & 78.2.2) and all was fine. I have now also imap on a fresh install (on a different machine) and all is fine... I assume on your case that either profile is messed up or the settings are wrong... Try to change incoming settings to a fake server, restart, change again incoming server settings with those from Gmail help page, restart thunderbird again...