Block placement distance in Survival seems broken/different than before they accidentally added the longer distance from Creative mode. It's a bit weird to characterize. It's like you cannot place blocks more than 2 blocks away sometimes when you are trying to place on top of an existing block. But, you can place a block on the side of an existing block at that distance.

This is in survival with split controls off.

Probably related to the fix for MCPE-8458