For anyone that runs into this issue, it's really just a matter of how you go through the cluster quickstart.
It actually had nothing to do with how the hosts were added, it was because I needed to go through the cluster quickstart "configure hosts" tab to complete the setup. Even though I had already done the EVC and other settings directly, I had to set them in the Configure hosts tab of the Quickstart for the message to go away.
It took some time with a vmware engineer for us to figure that piece out.
Hopefully that helps someone if they run into this.