Hi everyone. My solution to this (after trying everything I came across on the internet) was to make sure power was on to the fixture, install a bulb and go through the setup process (without putting them into sync mode ie turning them off and on). This worked for all 20 bulbs. It failed for two of them but after I started the process again they worked fine.
This is not recommended as the setup process tells you to make sure power is off prior to installing the bulb but this simply did not work with my set up. I am just explaining what I did to get them to work. Now my entire kitchen, living room and foyer are on smart bulbs. No issues so far but it’s only been about 8 hrs with most of that time spent sleeping 
One thing to note: even if your dimmer is all the way up, some dimmers cut power back even at what seems 100%. This is true for cheaper dimmer switches. I proved this out by installing a fairly expensive dimmer which got rid of the flickering issue i had with my original dimmer. I ended up installing a normal switch with no dimmer since they are much cheaper than the $26 dimmer switch I used to experiment with.