What happens when you add a PEF license is that yo can define roles on the controller. As soon as the license is removed (or expired in the case of an evaluation license), on a reboot each configured role is removed from the running configuration. That means that as soon as you reboot the controller without a PEF license active, all user-defined roles are removed, and just the system 'authenticated' role with full access remains.
The referred article mentions the same: you need PEF for role-based access, without PEF just full access, and that is the same for MAC, 802.1X, WPA2-Enterprise, and so on. Without the PEF license, you can return VLAN attributes during the authentication, just no roles as those are unavailable in that case.
If you need a copy of your lost license, you can ask Aruba TAC for assistance. They should be able to provide you with the existing license if you mention the serial number of the controller.