Let me know if you come up with any further information. I am sure this is a problem that can be solved, but it is hard to understand what might be causing it, I don't think it is a bug with the module though.
When an article is marked as featured in resources there is a field in the jos_js_res_record database table called 'featured' that is set to 1, otherwise it is set to 'zero'. The module just checks that field to determine if the article is featured.
How the module handles it depends on how the 'Frontpage/Featured Articles' parameter is set, you can choose to include them with other articles, exclude them, or show featured articles only. You might check that you have set this correctly.
Otherwise the only thing that might be causing problems is the bug with the start publishing time - unless I am missing something.