Today I tested it with RAK/MNTD lora module (taken from MNTD Helium miner) with same result. Also found this older discussion I2C I/O error, or timeout
Not sure if it is related. This guy had simmilar issue on RPI4 with 64 bit Balena OS - but only inside docker container.
He also mentioned i2c worked fine (in container) in Raspbian OS.
Here is mine output from BalenaOS on RPI5
lsmod | grep i2c
i2c_dev 20480 0
i2c_brcmstb 16384 0
i2c_designware_platform 16384 0
i2c_designware_core 24576 1 i2c_designware_platform
And here same command from Raspbian OS - RPI5 (i2c working):
lsmod | grep i2c
i2c_dev 65536 0
i2c_brcmstb 65536 0
i2c_designware_platform 65536 0
i2c_designware_core 65536 1 i2c_designware_platform