rpwe not picking up cat id from category.php

First…. Thank you SO much to all the people who have solved problems here previously. Thanks to this great archive, which fortunately turns up in Google search results, I have solved *countless* bugs on my site. So if you have ever helped someone here, THANK YOU from the *legions* of us who have silently read (and benefited from) it later.

The bug that finally prompts me to write for help:

I have successfully (after days of work) customized my category.php to reflect a list of the respective category’s posts, using rpwe and a call-category code. See the successful page here.

Problem:
Although it works correctly on the page referenced above, for all other category pages the list of recent posts returns a blank list. See the unsuccessful page here.

Controls:
The correct cat always displays in the page title – so the cat is successfully passed to the category.php.
List of recent posts works on one, but no other, category.
Yes, I am testing by clicking only on categories that have at least one post.
Yes, I have tried every variation of “get cat id” and object id, etc, ad nauseum. You can see each commented-out trial-block in my code posted below.
I have tried moving all code into the header section. No difference.

Question:
Anyone know why (only) rpwe is not picking up the current category?

THANK YOU!

get_header(); ?>

<div id="primary" class="content-area">

	<header class="page-header">
		<?php
			the_archive_title( '<h1 class="page-title-cat">', '</h1>' );
			the_archive_description( '<div class="taxonomy-description-cat">', '</div>' );
		?>
	</header><!-- .page-header -->

	<div class="rpwe_cat">
		<div class="rpwe_cat_title">All Posts in this Category:</div>

		<!-- START - SERIES OF VARIATIONS TO MAKE (CURRENT ARCHIVE) RECENT POST LIST DISPLAY -->
		<!-- START - SERIES OF VARIATIONS TO MAKE (CURRENT ARCHIVE) RECENT POST LIST DISPLAY --> 

		<?php
			//$middle1 = get_query_var('cat');
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle1 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			$middle2 = get_queried_object_id();
			echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle2 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			//$middle3 = get_the_category();
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle3 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			//$middle4 = get_cat_ID();
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle4 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			//$middle5 = the_archive_id();
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle5 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			//$middle6 = get_the_archive_id();
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle6 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>
		<?php
			//$middle7 = get_the_cat_id();
			//echo do_shortcode('[rpwe limit="25" thumb="false" cat="' . $middle7 . '" styles_default="false" cssID="fvbig"]');
		?>

		<!-- END - SERIES OF VARIATIONS TO MAKE (CURRENT ARCHIVE) RECENT POST LIST DISPLAY -->
		<!-- END - SERIES OF VARIATIONS TO MAKE (CURRENT ARCHIVE) RECENT POST LIST DISPLAY --> 

	</div>

</div><!-- .content-area -->

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/recent-posts-widget-extended/