The python client had a persistent notification at the bottom of the screen when someone in your rating range was searching ladder. The java client has nothing like this, so people just assume that it would be impossible to find a ladder game and never search. You have to ping everyone in your rating range every time you search ladder if you want to get a game. The persistent notification is perhaps a bit excessive, but some kind of highlighted indicator on the queue page would help a lot.
Matchmaker notification/indicator
Well, the issue is still available here to follow https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/2943
When the feature depends on server changes then it will probably take much more time than usual and with all the backlog with much more important stuff, I do not see it happen in the next time, unless a developer has cherrypicked it for personal reasons.