I was able to solve this issue last night by visiting each of these subs, opening the Sidebar category, and tapping the Pending to unsubscribe. I was then able to return to the main list of communities and resubscribe from there. The trick is to only tap Subscribe once, even if it doesn't immediately change the status. It will eventually go through in 10-15 seconds.
Edit: After further testing, this method can be replicated from within the respective community as well. You don't have to return to the overview of all communities as I had mentioned previously. The only trouble I've had since has been largely due to a spotty mobile connection during travel.
When you see that, you're subscribed on your instance's side, it just hasn't gone to the other instance to update their subscriber number. You'll still see content from those communities in your feed while it is pending.
Same problem here. Lemmy.ml is the root instance, as mentioned it may be overloaded and not responding to requests. Or it could be some kind of bug, in any case you can still select it and see the community.
Is there somewhere I can see subscriptions I have pending? I just keep searching for different communities and hitting the sub button, but not all have subbed. I'm guessing I'm in the same boat as you but I don't remember what they all would have been now.
At the top of the home page, click the word "Communities"
On the resulting page, click the word in the box "Subscribed" and you will see what you are subscribed to, "Pending Subscription" will show in red in the last column.
You can subscribe to the unsubscribed communities by clicking the word Unsubscribed at the far right.
I guess that explains it. btw I created a user on Lemmy.ml a while ago, way before the reddit kerfuffle, but I think my home will be Lemmy.one - I also have users on one or two other instances, does it mess up anything to have "waspentalive" appear on several instances?