When I was under the chair/lounge icon nothing happened when I tried selecting the speak bubbles -..

When you first enter the lounge, you are already in the chat room, so tapping on the speech bubble icon will not do anything. It may take several minutes for the messages to load. And you should be able to see and use the bottom right speech bubble icon with "+" to begin writing a message.

If that is not working correctly, contact customer support for more assistance, through the "help" button in the game settings (green gear icon).