Ok, I finally solved it!
Under the animation blueprint for the head, go the Animgraph tab and make sure under the Livelink Pose box that your Live Link subject name is pointing to the correct input.
This way you can bypass clicking the Use Live Link checkbox on your Metahuman which disables the body animation during runtime.
Now it works in play mode! If your Livelink source changes in the future just make to sure to update here to keep it working.
If you are looking for the face animation blueprint you can find it under your Metahuman blueprint.
Hope this helps save somebody time going forward.