Hi Jim,
Thanks for reaching out, and I’m so sorry for the trouble here! Unfortunately, domains with .staging or other subdomains aren’t recognized as clear staging sites by our systems–only domains with .staging as the TLD portion (i.e. yoursite.staging) of your domain will be properly exempted from your allowed activations.
That said, there’s no problem with continuing to use your licensed products on this staging site! If you should need to upgrade your plugins at any time, you can either move your license as needed to perform automatic upgrades, or you may simply download the latest plugin updates from your account and upload them through the Plugins section of your development site.
I hope that helps–so sorry to be the bearer of bad news here! Let me know if you should have any other questions. I’d be more than glad to assist! 🙂