Hello @HJM1958 and welcome to our friendly King Community. There has been some problems with sending and receiving lives for awhile and the studio is aware of it and has been working on a solution. You can find out more information about this here.
Please be patient, hopefully there will be a solution to these issues soon.
If the friends do not show up in your game anywhere, nor on your map or in the mailbox, please check the app permissions on Facebook. You can find how to check that here.