The point at this state of the plugin is that you need to have the exact same amount of faces before you start the bending operation as when you finish it. The plugin can only "remember" UV co-ordinates on existing faces. This is why subdivision is needed before.
You can use Shape Bender but I used FredoScale - all the same; the resulting shape will be bent.
You can even give Tgi3D SU Amorph a shot. That can also restore UV co-ordinates (in fact, once it worked on a model where TT's UV Toolkit failed - but TT's plugin is admittedly a WIP one for the time being...)