VC elements not showing up when activating new theme

Hey there, I feel like the squeaky wheel!! New question:

My blog is 7 years old so when activating this new theme I created everything in a separate space, then copied and pasted the coding into my current blog backend in WP, then activated the Wildster theme and worked to fix all the little things that needed fixing with the new activation.

However, even though the VC is available, all the VC components I created in the separate space and copied and pasted over are not available for edit…. they don’t show up at all except in the WP builder, in HTML coding. Does this mean I have to rebuild everything in the new space in order to edit them? Or is this a bug? Or did I do something wrong?

I appreciate all your support. Thanks.