To confirm, when you first plug in the GPU and power on the system there is no lighting present on the card, even when toggling with the LED SMT switch?
Can you confirm the header has not been disconnected on the right side of the PCB (beneath the ProbeIT points)?
While not the OP I am having a similar issue with similar components however the card is lighting up but only "breathing" in red. downloaded latest drivers for the card and aura sync (didn't see an option for beta).
No lights at all anywhere on the card? My new 2080Tis at first were not detected and took an update but they lit up doing a breathing red then synched fine after software update.
There are two headers. One on the end of the card does the fan housing and the backplate header is under the back plate. Makes me wonder if this has anything to do with the PCIE cable being used for the vertical mount.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein
I had the same problem of the RTX 2080 not appearing in Aura Sync or lighting up. When I first installed the video card, the LEDs lit up just fine. However, after the second time firing up my rig, the LEDs did not come on. I downloaded Aura Sync and the RTX 2080 was not recognized in the software. I searched around the internet and struggled to find any solution that worked for me. I wound up fixing it by unplugging and removing the card from the PCIe slot and re-plugging it in. Once I booted up after that, the LEDs were on again and the card was now appearing in Aura Sync. Weird.....
so i had to install the Aura specfic for the graphics cards (you don't need to launch it) reboot and then it showed up for me in the main Aura software and syncs.
Version 0.0.6.1 2019/04/0211.28 MBytes AURA_RGBLightingControl_for_Graphic_card_XG-STATION_Version 0.0.6.1