So… I’m going to answer my own question with what I just did to fix it. A bloody hail mary. I have been trying to fix this from within the dashboard, and for some reason the widget would not save the changes.
So I saw an option on the right side to “Manage with live preview.” That took me to a live view of the website, where I could select different elements to modify. I selected the upper left link widget, told it to get rid of the two displays I didn’t want, hit publish on top, and it went through. Everything saved, and it looks good.
So for whatever reason, any changes I make in the dashboard don’t work right with the new wordpress. But changes I make in live preview DO work. I still have no idea why, but it worked.
So I guess I solved my own question and have no idea why I needed to use such a roundabout method to do it, and why the dashboard changes don’t take while the live preview changes do take.
I still have no clue. 🙂
