Thank you, John. I knew it was something simple.. I don’t know how I missed it. Also, I isolated the heading number using the PHP explode function:
<?php
// check if the flexible content field has rows of data
if( have_rows('page_layout') ):
// loop through the rows of data
while ( have_rows('page_layout') ) : the_row();
if( get_row_layout() == 'heading_text' ):
$headingLevel = get_sub_field('heading_level');
$headingLevelIsolated = (explode(" ",$headingLevel));
$headingContent = get_sub_field('heading_content');
echo '<h' . $headingLevelIsolated[1] . '>' . $headingContent . '</h' . $headingLevelIsolated[1] . '>';