Kontakt will not play in Logic

Are you on an M1 Mac. Quit Logic first. Try control clicking (or right clicking, or two finger flicking) on Logic Pro in the applications folder, and selecting Get Info, (or single clicking, and doing Cmd-I), and ticking the checkbox next to ‘Open with Rosetta’. Now, open the application. It will emulate being an Intel Mac, so if Kontakt plays up with M1 chips, the issue should be resolved. If the issue isn’t resolved by this, be sure to untick that checkbox for better performance.

Maybe, just maybe. Try set Kontakt to 'omni' instead of Midi channel 1. Has been an issue with Kontakt with earlier versions of Logic.

Have you done the usual checkup for solo-ed, muted tracks / regions, etc.? If so, and everything is alright, I'd check Kontakt audio settings. Also, and I know it's basic stuff, but still: do you have an instrument actually loaded into Kontakt?

Ive tried opening Kontakt as its own instrument with a library loaded to no avail.

You mean, in standalone mode? If so, this points to an issue with Kontakt itself. Your experiment with the Maschine project actually confirms this hypothesis.