Hi -back from long weekend. I see the problem well now. And, I think I found the cause, after a couple minutes testing this morning. The buttons have a "hidden" property called ZOrderSet = (some value). This is fouling up the instantiation positioning.

USE & BROW the VCX, look in the Properties field for all the buttons. Delete all the references to ZOrderSet. Close it up and run it again. You should see the separators appear correctly now, etc. May need a few adjustments, but I think that's the basic problem.