block view is not displaying
Sounds to me like you have the 'Only listed pages' setting wrong.
I tend to use pathauto, so always have nice 'friendly' URL's, but I suspect you want "node/1" rather than simply "1" in the "only listed pages" field of the block config.

WRT your initial issue - are you using Delta? Regions may not be enabled for all delta's of the subtheme which could cause the initial problem.