Lost photos from my ICloud

So, I upgraded my Apple plan to the 200gb ICloud Storage because my iPhone kept telling me I'm out of storage.

I read that the pictures will be saved on ICloud even if I delete them from my iPhone. When I deleted those pics from my iPhone, the ICloud didn't show it be deleted immediately, so I thought it was ok to delete everything.

Now all the pics are gone from ICloud.

What's the point of having ICloud if you can't easily keep the pics on the phone to the ICloud?

Am I wasting money here??

Wish there was a simple way to allow the pics to stay up in ICloud when I delete them on my phone. I was told that we have to physically upload each picture to the ICloud, which is tedious.

Gah