I've done more testing, If the gnupg folder is not moved from its default
location gpgex.dll works in v 2.2.0.

The gpgex.dll problem occurs in version 2.2.0 when the user's GNUPGHOME
environment variable has been set to a non-default location (not the user's
default \AppData\Roaming\gnupg)

Kleopatra works fine but for some reason gpgex doesn't work. It produces an
error "Cannot connect to the GnuPG interface (Kleopatra): IPC Connect call failed"