You pay $15 a month for access to their servers. Not any one explicit server or character.
There has been a lot of noise in regards to the locked realms. If this is the first time you’ve had to deal with any of it - I am sorry this is how it’s going to happen for you.
There are no workarounds. GMs cannot override the locks that the Devs have in place, so a ticket isn’t likely to grant you any satisfaction. Those locks and the rules surrounding them are hardcoded in by the Devs. Once you deleted those characters, you removed your capability of playing on that server until the restrictions are removed by the Devs. They will reopen the realm eventually, there just isn’t an estimation or timetable made available at this time.
They’ve been updating a singular post over in the Wrath GD as well as the support article I’ve linked. There are no exploits happening here, this is just how they’ve got their systems lined up to work until the initial surge of players subsides. They messed up badly in allowing the creation of mega-realms, and this is how they’re trying to keep it from happening again. And it’s not anything new, this has been in place and active for the past month and a half.