@Reinhard also sent me an email about this. Pasting my reply here so it helps future searchers:
oh! That’s expected behavior (for the esp32, the nrf52 doesn’t have this limitation). If a packet arrives on lora the esp32 will immediately wake, otherwise it only wakes every few minutes. This has been true since the beginning of the project and is a limitation of the ESP32 bluetooth stack (and a missing 32khz oscillator - but I digress).
You can change this interval if you wish, there is an ‘advanced settings’ tab inside the app if you click on the menu in the upper right. Thanks for the good ideas.