Yes that version is unstartable due to the bug described in PIO 2.1.1 does not work · Issue #2170 · platformio/platformio-vscode-ide · GitHub, that’s why it was fixed and re-released within one hour, too, as 2.1.2.
Looking at the commit history yesterday I noticed commit
…was removing that PlatformIO calls could be done in a normal terminal. This is a guess in the blue, but maybe it has something to do with the issue of not being able to start the debug server? Or maybe that commit interferes.
This patch is included since 2.1.1, so since extension version 2.1.0 works as reported, it’s a strong indication that that might have something to do with it.
Anyways, since 3 users have confirmed this issue (also see topic Error debugging for NUCLEO-F103RB, Can't debug with esp32), I think @ivankravets should look at this regression.