I take advantage of the fact that this happened to me a few weeks ago to comment that it is indeed very strange that this happens... and even less if you have never rooted your device. Even so, it also happened to me without being Root or anything like that. Coincidentally, my device is an Asus ZenFone 7 and suddenly, I could not find the Play Store (Google Play).
I tried hard reset and recovery, but I could not get it to appear again ... in the end what I had to do is to search the internet for an APK version of Google Play. That yes... you have to be very careful, because if the site is not of your trust you may download the store with some malware...
If it helps, I downloaded it from this link, as it is a store that I frequent normally and has never given me problem. In addition, even so, I bothered to pass the downloaded APK through TotalVirus and the result was satisfactory. After several weeks of use, I can already assure you that it works perfectly. In addition, once you have the store back on the device, you can already access the official updates normally.
I hope I have helped you. If so, you can give me a like 😜, it helps and motivates me to continue helping other colleagues.
Best regards
