I have resolved this. It involved dumping the database and starting with a clean one. To do this, I exported my widget. The plug in I used, Widget Importer & Exporter, didn’t recognize its own file, but allowed me to copy and paste into a text box and that saved me some work. Backup Migration offered to backup my theme but restored none of my customizations so that saved me no time. WordPress’s export and import feature worked as expected, thank goodness. I don’t know where in the database this issue resided but I hope I don’t see it again. Thanks for any interest.
