iPhone died and, upon powering up, all texts were deleted

WTF? It's a POS 5s and has been having weird glitches upon dying (like contact names not showing up at first) but this shite is ridiculous. I have sensitive work information in my texts that I need. When I do spotlight search, I can see the texts, so they are clearly hiding somewhere.

Anyone have experience with this? Apparently Ifonebox or something can help recover, but I'd rather not shell out $50 for something that might work. Does Icloud save texts?