Wordpress file size limit 2MB, linux host .. none of solutions online working

I'm struggling to increase Maximum upload file size: 2 MB on my linux machine where I host my wordpress website... Things I tried and that are still active:

.htaccess

php_value upload_max_filesize 64M
php_value post_max_size 64M
php_value max_execution_time 300
php_value max_input_time 300

editing wordpress theme functions.php

@ini_set( 'upload_max_size' , '64M' );
@ini_set( 'post_max_size', '64M');
@ini_set( 'max_execution_time', '300' );

wp-settings.php

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

wp-config.php

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');
define('WP_UPLOAD_MAX_SIZE' , '64M');
@ini_set( 'upload_max_size' , '64M' );
@ini_set( 'post_max_size', '64M');
@ini_set( 'memory_limit', '64M' );

adding php.ini

upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M
max_execution_time = 300

and doing service apache2 restart(even stop and start...) so it's not the restart because I saw one linux thread with this subject and his solution at the end was:

The problem was that I had to restart the apache server in a different way I guess

These are all the fixes I could find online and I became pretty desperate being stuck on this problem for so long ... Hopefully someone will help!