I have encountered this problem many times. This problem only happen when I programmatically create/edit posts. They could be customs post or even Wordpress' default post. The symptoms could be:
post_status is set to 'any'. Curiously when I set post_status to published it works.This is a self-answered question. I encountered this problem several times before and always forget its cause. And searches hint to possibilities that many others are stuck without solution too.
TL;DR;: It's publish, not published.
The cause of this problem is because I when programmatically create new posts, I set its post_status to published. Common reason for the confusion is when you approve a post programmatically, switching post status from pending to published because it seem logical.
The reason those posts are showing in neither queries nor admin dashboard is because WP_Query's post_status => 'any' doesn't actually query for 'any' post status as we expect, but any registered post status. Since wordpress had no prior knowledge of the post status published, they're simply ignored by the queries.
Now here's to hope I don't forget what I wrote today again next year.