Tags UI not working in WP dashboard

I’m about to upgrade from 2.1.3 to most recent 2.9.1.

To update my theme files, I created a test subdomain, and downloaded 2.8.6 (most recent when I started the process).

I have to say, the older dashboard had a much easier to use UI than the new one. But I checked out all the new menus, etc., and got most everything to work EXCEPT for:

Publish
Post Tags

areas in the “New Post” page. Publish “Edit” links do nothing. Tags — can enter text in text entry area, but clicking on Add or “Choose from the most used tags” link does nothing.

From within the Tags menu item (from left main menu), I can add new tags to the list of tags, but I cannot get the tags to add to each post.

This is a clean testbed install — NO plugins.

Is there a way to use something like Autometa to get around this? Or a way to get it working? I used to just use Autometa in the old version, which seemed to work OK.

Thanks in advance for any help.