  Measurements of (anti)deuteron and (anti)$^3$He production in the rapidity
range $ |y| < $ 0.5 as a function of the transverse momentum and event
multiplicity in Xe$-$Xe collisions at a center-of-mass energy per
nucleon$-$nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 5.44 TeV are presented. The
coalescence parameters $B_2$ and $B_3$ are measured as a function of the
transverse momentum per nucleon. The ratios between (anti)deuteron and
(anti)$^3$He yields and those of (anti)protons and pions are reported as a
function of the mean charged-particle multiplicity density, and compared with
two implementations of the statistical hadronization model (SHM) and with
coalescence predictions. The elliptic flow of (anti)deuterons is measured for
the first time in Xe$-$Xe collisions and shows features similar to those
already observed in Pb$-$Pb collisions, i.e., the mass ordering at low
transverse momentum and the meson$-$baryon grouping at intermediate transverse
momentum. The production of nuclei is particularly sensitive to the chemical
freeze-out temperature of the system created in the collision, which is
extracted from a grand-canonical-ensemble-based thermal fit, performed for the
first time including light nuclei along with light-flavor hadrons in Xe$-$Xe
collisions. The extracted chemical freeze-out temperature $T_{\rm chem}$ =
(154.2 $\pm$ 1.1) MeV in Xe$-$Xe collisions is similar to that observed in
Pb$-$Pb collisions and close to the crossover temperature predicted by lattice
QCD calculations.
