do i HAVE to use

dependencies {
    classpath("com.android.tools.build:gradle:_")
    classpath("org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:_")
  }

instead of

plugins {
    id("com.android.application")
    id("com.android.library")
}

with pluginManagement ? is that already a known issue ?

The plugin ids you mentioned are not published until version 4.1 or 4.2, and you need to setup the google repository in the pluginManagement DSL. Before that, they rely on the buildscript dependency, and we have an undocumented facility with the key

plugin.android

as you can see in the

sample-android

.