I just created my own account and this seemed to go without issues.. It took about a week before I received my confirmation e-mail.
By reading your post it seems the only thing you did is confirm the e-mail address after signing up, correct?
After a few days you should receive an e-mail with the subject "Your Steemit account has been approved". In this mail there's a link to continue setting up the account, after which you can start using Steemit.
Thanks for the comment. I didn't get the second email even after a few weeks. That's the issue, and I now can't use the phone number or email address. Not sure if there was a problem with new acccounts.