Assuming you do have islands enabled.And they worked on the portal page.
You must have turned them off
Turn off the left column
Turn off the right column
in your mystuff edit prefrences.

You can disable the feature to not allow users to turn them off
at
Control Panel » Portal Settings
Allow users to turn off the left column?
Allow users to turn off the right column?

Blue Man Group
There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers