PHP update failing

I am running WP 5.4.2 with the Suits theme on HostGator shared hosting. All plugins and themes are up-to-date and WP says I have the latest WP version. I have a warning to update my PHP and I am running into trouble.

I have tried updating to PHP 7.x through cPanel/MultiPHP manager but my site will show
“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.”

I can revert to PHP 5.4 and be back up.

Steps I have taken:
Websearches indicate that as long as WP and plugins are current, this is usually a conflict between PHP version instructions in .htaccess

1) But, after I try going to 7.x, this is all that appears at the end of my .htaccess file. There are no entries above that refer to another PHP version.

# php — BEGIN cPanel-generated handler, do not edit
# Set the “ea-php70” package as the default “PHP” programming language.
<IfModule mime_module>
AddHandler application/x-httpd-ea-php70 .php .php7 .phtml
</IfModule>
# php — END cPanel-generated handler, do not edit

2) When I revert to PHP 5.4, this is at the bottom of .htaccess

# php — BEGIN cPanel-generated handler, do not edit
# This domain inherits the “PHP” package.
# php — END cPanel-generated handler, do not edit

HostGator’s documentation doesn’t cover this circumstance and I have not found any other causes besides the .htaccess suggestions.

Any idea how I can get past this and update to a supported PHP version?

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