UIRoot is ON but not showing until toggled twice

[mcc]

Recently something happened to my NGUI widgets that i have not seen before.
in the inspector, the UIRoot is active(on), but in the game view is invisible.  toggling it off and back on makes it visible again, until hitting play, where it becomes invisible (yet still on).  toggling during play does same thing.  what do i do to get it to be visible while on like it was an hour ago?

[ArenMook]

I can see weirdness happening if you have a panel and a widget on the same game object, or multiple widgets on the same game object. Check your UI hierarchy.