Can you try running the page without the gears through Facebook's URL Debug Tool:
developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
That will have Facebook re-scan the page for some of the information that JFBConnect enters and hopefully will make the gears appear and have it function according to your settings.
If that doesn't help, can you point me to both pages that you have the comment boxes on? One with the JFBCComments module and one with the {JFBCComments ..} tag? They both should be behave the exact same.
Thanks,
Alex