Unable to remove stickers and emojis from my iPhone keyboard after iOS 18.3 update

Not sure if you guys have since figured this out, but it took a LOT of messing around for me to finally fix it. It's "easy" once you do it, but was so roundabout and unnecessary. My iPhone is iOS 18.3.2 currently.

1. Open the emoji keyboard in Messages
2. Click the Stickers button in the "+" menu (the emojis should become very large in size)
3. Click the Clock tab that appears at the top of that menu (on the far left)
4. Press/hold the Sticker for about 1-ish second (it will "expand" a tiny bit, showing that you've selected it, and a light glow encompasses it for a second)
5. When you let go, a there should be a banner above it that says "Remove." (You can remove Stickers, emojis, and memoji stickers by following those steps).

I have verified that YES it will remove it from your recently used emojis WITHOUT you having to delete the sticker OR the memoji.

I wish I would've tinkered with it for just a few minutes more, because I ended up deleting the stickers. But it was only 2 of them, so it won't be a hardship to get them back.

Happy deleting, y'all :D