As I continued reading through the forum, I found the solution:
The widget appearance differs depending on whether or not responsiveness is triggered.
When site fits on screen, the columns behave normally (with hover effects and all); when responsiveness kicks in because the site no longer fits the screen, the theme considers this to be a mobile device (hence no mouse to hover with) so it replaces hovering effects with static elements with texts under the images.
So, just enlarge your browser and Ta-Da! It works! 😉