I figured out our issue was related to our server certificate
adding this code allowed us to license the software properly:
add_action('http_api_curl', function( $handle ){
//Don't verify SSL certs
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
}, 10);
the license agent seems to already set sslverify host to false but the verifypeer was also needed.