The upper portion of 表 is made of 王, not 生, so why does WaniKani list it as containing 生?
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If they used 王, that would be stretching things as well, since 表 has the vertical line that goes above the top horizontal line, while in 王 the vertical line stops at the top horizontal line. 生 has the vertical line that goes through the top, but it also has the extra little swoop, so neither of them are an exact match.
WaniKani radicals are there to make mnemonics with, and there isn’t always a shape that perfectly matches, so sometimes they go with something close to it. They possibly could have gone with 王 (and maybe mentioned an extra dash?), but they chose not to for probably not particularly deep reasons.
EDIT: Apparently, its actual origin is 毛 sandwiched by 衣, and it got simplified to this shape over time. Since there isn’t a radical that looks exactly like the top of 表 otherwise, some compromise has to be made in this system.
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That’s actually really interesting, thank you!
An unrelated Kanji, 青, actually uses 生 with the first stroke removed. But then, f* etymology on the bottom part. But it can worth knowing very very later on, if you see several of rarer Kanji…
Perhaps not worth making mnemonics based on the actual etymology. 当 is another one that comes to mind.
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If the WK radical doesn’t do it for you you can always look for alternative splits like here
表 – Kanji details – jpdb => "composed of " => 龶 – Kanji details – jpdb
And you can choose if you prefer “life” over “king with a hat” 
The thing to pay attention to is to look for the compound/part in 龶 - Jisho.org too to not miss a “true” kanji by inadvertence, there are a lots of interesting subcomponents/kanjis not detailed in WK.
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