Embarrassed to report that I simply saw the yellow bar message and assumed it was the same error. We are too fast to read these days. You are right, the conflict is due to s2member. They have an additional setting to allow open registrations, and I set that correctly but for some reason doesn’t work.
One question, is there a way to customize the fields (trying to also get a name) with the open registration form? I realize this may be some wordpress setting outside of the plugin but I am not able to find easily!