You must have been on an extremely old version of Sonos and iOS before. At the end of August 2019, Apple made a change to iOS that broke the ability for Sonos, and other companies, to play "from this device". Please refer to the main thread on this, most importantly the first post, which offers and discusses many options, ranging from free to not.

Yeah, I caught up later today on those developments.  Unfortunate, but put it on the list.  I will check out that main thread in a day or two.  Thanks for the reply.  As I said, I departed this place in early 2020, and hadn’t updated in a few months at that time.  Tonight I’ll live with Spotify for my gathering.