OK, think I solved it. It worked locally just fine. Turns out I am using Dreamweaver and it has a "cloaking" feature on its site management so that you don't have to worry about uploading source files for images like the original Photoshop PSD files. Of course PNG is the native format for Fireworks and so DW kindly had them excluded from upload.
If I had used an external FTP this would not have happened. I did remove PNG from the cloaked list and it works like a charm now.
Re: buttons in UI missing after new install
If I had used an external FTP this would not have happened. I did remove PNG from the cloaked list and it works like a charm now.