Appreciate the feedback. and this is absolutely possible and why i was asking about permissions.Just want to address this point directly due to the implication. Correlation is not causation in this case. The fact your license expired is not relevant to thiis issue, I just presume it happened around the same time.
First thing I would look at is the number of errors that are appearing in your browser's console (accessible via the developer tools).
For example:
This looks to me like a Content Security Policy that you have applied. It's too stringent and it is affecting the visibility of elements in a weird way, and is likely the cause of some elements briefly being shown when they shouldn't be.
Any chance we have a default permissions list for all xf extracted files, that I can run?
I would prefer to not go through the motions of setting up a fresh install just to get perms and create a script to correct my current pub directory if I don't have to do that...