The manual reads “You can activate punch in and punch out by activating the corresponding buttons on the Transport panel.
The punch in position is locked to the left locator position and the punch out position to the right locator position. The punch position fields are unavailable. However, you can detach the punch points from the locators by deactivating Lock Punch Points to Locators.”
I have set the two punch points but there is no button to deactivate Lock Punch Points to Locators. Nor can I find or activate these punch handles on the marker track that are mentioned.
Why has Cubase been made so unnecessarily complicated? The simplest things are now convoluted and hidden. I used to love using Cubase but now it just makes my blood boil. I have used Cubase since the very first version on Atari but these days I just go back to Ableton for its ease of use. Today I have spent an hour just trying to figure out how a basic everyday function like Punch In and Out now works in Cubase 9.5. I read the manual but it does not correspond to what I see on my screen. This should be so user-friendly you don’t even have to use the manual and if you do go to the manual at least explain it properly and so it matches the actual software. I’m only using Cubase today for an old project that was done in Cubase otherwise I wouldn’t even be bothering with it.
I think your position fields are unavailable because you have to expand that section of the transport bar. Hover your mouse over the 3 dots on the right of the punch locators and click and drag to the right. Now your fields will show. If you keep your mousepointer on top of one of the locators it will show you a shortcut to set them.
I just leave the punch locked to the locators. That way it will work like it Always did. Hope this gets you in the right direction. Just posted a “punch question” as well so I know how you feel. I attached a few pictures but that went a bit chaotic. Some are double now…. Well… hope it helps.
Blademan thank you so much. Clicking the 3 dots solved the mystery and revealed the punch position display and the little lock icon that I have been tearing my hair our trying to find. It would have been so helpful if they put that in the manual. Pretty sure they didn’t because I have read that section about 3 times now. All good again for now until they inevitably change it again. 
Well it’s a thousand-page manual and I must have missed that bit. It’s certainly not mentioned in the section about punching in and out. Steinberg has a habit of taking commonly used functions and just hiding them for no good reason in follow up versions. My next challenge is to figure out what has happened to stack recording as that all seems to have changed now.
