sfgelectronics:
The library that I am using specifies that in order to start communication with the lcd, you need to use lcd.begin(sda, scl). In this case, sda is pin 0, scl is pin 2.
While doing that in begin() "works", it doesn't conform to the LiquidCyrstal API and is kind of an odd thing to do, since it is passing parameters to the LCD library which are really for the Wire library.
You could use my hd44780 library. It works on the ESP parts.
By default it uses the pins assigned to the defines SDA and SCL
If you want to change them, you can call ESP API extension Wire.pins(sda,scl) before you call the lcd.begin() method to change them to other pins.
--- bill