Hello infotechbiz and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
I see you have a question about the availability of certain features when participating in group chat sessions via the Messages app.
About iMessage and SMS/MMS - Apple Support
The features you are describing are only available if all users in the group are on Apple devices using the iMessages protocol. If even one member of the group is on an Android device, then the entire group defaults to standard SMS messaging (because Android devices are not capable of sending or receiving iMessages) and those features are not available when using SMS.
Cheers.