We can craft the Upgrade template and only the upgrade template. But when trying to craft the upgrades we put in the recipe and nothing happens. We are using version 1.16.3 - 8.2.2

Can't reproduce in the current version of 1.16. Maybe it was a pack or mod conflict problem. The recipes themselves also changed at some point to be a bit cheaper so that could be the issue if you weren't taking the recipe from JEI.

Do you have any other mods installed?

This seems to be related to #886
You are both running 1.16.3
Could you close this issue and add any other relevant information on that one?