I have the exact same problem. I don't have a static home page. It was working when i first installed, then I deleted the hello post and added some of my own. Went back and the top feature was gone from home page. Still works on post pages. I'm betting it has something to do with that period when I didn't have any posts showing. I think that causes some issue. Any ideas on the fix? I tried deleting and reinstalling the theme, but I think WP remembers the settings from the previous install so didn't help.