civil cells not working

Go in to the dgnlib where you created the civil cell.  In project explorer right click on the cell and select properties.  One of the fields in there is "valid for placement".  Make sure it is set to true.  If it is false there is something wrong with your cell.

Gonzalo, I see your image there looks like you may be trying to place from the wrong dialog box.  It is correct to see them where you see there when using FDOT standards/workspace.  To get these to work, use the "Place Civil Cell" ribbon tool (or from search bar in the top right of ORD -also F4 gets you there) and there should be an OpenRoads Modeling workflow ribbon tab called "Model Detailing"... You'll see the Place Civil Cell tool there.  You should see a smaller dialog come up with three dots.  Click those three dots to select your desired civil cell.  The window for each civil cell will show red lines in the preview.  Those red lines are required construction lines to use in a particular order when placing.  You may need to retry each in a different order to get the cell to place in the way it should work.  3D civil cells require some lines to have active profiles.  I'll see if I can dig up a video to explain more detail. Hope this helps for now!

they arent showing up in the civil cell ribbon, but the program are identifying them in the project explorer 

they have valid placement as No when looking at their properties. these same cells work find in microstation 

That may be because Civil cells are different from regular cells. Regular cells work fine in MicroStation, but cannot be placed as Civil Cells. If your cells  are NOT valid for placement, then they probably will not place. Are you able to change that Property to True, and if so, can you tell us if anything changes?