Widgets will not work

The following is the code in the sidebar.php that comes with the theme I am trying to use.

<div class="category">
        <h2 class="first">Recent Posts</h2>
        <ul>
          <?php get_archives('postbypost','5','html','','',FALSE); ?>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div class="category">
        <h2>Categories</h2>
        <ul>
          <?php wp_list_categories('show_count=1&title_li='); ?>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div class="category">
        <h2>Archives</h2>
        <ul>
          <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
        </ul>
      </div>

The items as defined above show in the sidebar but the theme does not show any other widgets when added. Since I don’t know much about coding (just enough to get in trouble) I am unsure why they won’t show and how I can go about fixing. I have tried reinstalling the theme, wordpress as well as trying to go backward and install 2.8 back to 2.6 to see if it would fix the issue. This theme was designed in mid 2008. Any help would be greatly appreciated.