search widget not displaying….

hi — just fresh-installed a new blog (my first on 2.2), and the widgety theme lifeisabyte (http://tranmanhhung.info/Tmhung/theme-design/life-is-a-byte-theme-for-wordpress-edited-from-itheme/) with a couple of superficial mods… all works fine with both standard and 3rd party widgets EXCEPT the standard SEARCH widget — I can add it to sidebars in the widget control panel, but it doesn’t show up — either onscreen or even when i do a view source… given that all the rest work, i’m assuming this is a bug somewhere… any clues where/how to debug (all my wp experience so far is pre-widget architecture, so all help appreciated)

d