Oh, okay...well, that's weird, I feel a little silly for not thinking of that.
Yes, those five controls were on that panel and the panel was set to "hide in play mode" and this was happening. When I set all of the individual controls on that panel to "hide in play mode" the behavior is the way I want it to be (they are hidden from startup). So it's a better workaround than going into Design mode, though it's still a bug...