I have an inkling:
When you use Corona lights as "Instanced Children" in a Scatter object, you cannot see the instances in the viewport, which looks like there is no cloning happening but it is. When you render, the lights are there.
I think this is the issue.
I could be wrong, though, but I don't think so ...
It's a jungle out there!
Rewatching Monk ATM ^^
PS
I think there is a bug hidden in there. The lights should be visible nonetheless and when I switch the viewport display mode to Full, I can, for example, see 3 lights of 12 that I entered in Surface Sc attering "count".
