Istore items not showing

I got a customer that states:

Using the iStore Administrator responsibility, I am trying to add products directly under a section (called Popular Products) without using any category-section mapping. 3 products were added under the Popular Products section (screenshot attached) but these products cannot be seen on the iStore customer site (screenshot attached). Also I verified that these products can be found via Direct Item Entry (see screenshot) and can be added to the shopping cart (see screenshot), so the products themselves are published and orderable on iStore.

I need to be able to add and see/publish products without having to depend on the category-section mapping functionality used to publish products on iStore.