WordPress Database Query works in phpMyAdmin but not in the code

Question

Your problem is that you use query method of wpdb and if you read it’s docs:

The query function allows you to execute any SQL query on the WordPress database. It is best used when there is a need for specific, custom, or otherwise complex SQL queries. For more basic queries, such as selecting information from a table, see the other wpdb functions above such as get_results, get_var, get_row or get_col.

query (string) The SQL query you wish to execute. This function
returns an integer value indicating the number of rows
affected/selected for SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, etc. For CREATE,
ALTER, TRUNCATE and DROP SQL statements, (which affect whole tables
instead of specific rows) this function returns TRUE on success. If a
MySQL error is encountered, the function will return FALSE. Note that
since both 0 and FALSE may be returned for row queries, you should be
careful when checking the return value. Use the identity operator
(===) to check for errors (e.g., false === $result), and whether any
rows were affected (e.g., 0 === $result).

You’ll see that it’s not what you want.

If you want to get results of the query, you should use get_results method:

$res = $wpdb->get_results( $sql );