You might be editing the preferences for the wrong section.
If you don’t get the expected result when making changes to a section’s preferences for the <%quicktease%>,<%latest%>, <%tips%> and/or <%announcements%> widgets, it’s likely that you’re applying your changes to the wrong section.
The display preferences for these widgets are controlled by the “target” section whose links are being shown, not by the section where the widgets are placed.
Here’s an example. Let’s say that you have a “News” section, and you want to display links from the “Business” section (with slug name biz) using the <%quicktease%> widget. You do this by placing the widget on the “News” section’s template page like so:
<%quicktease slug="biz"%>
Changing the “News” section’s HTML preferences has no effect on the display of the widget, even though it’s displayed by the News section’s template page.
Instead, the display of the links generated by those widgets is controlled by the “Business” section’s HTML preferences (specifically, in the “Links” screen).