This bug was originally reported with the accompanying suggested "workaround" by @Hylie Pistof.For the future, if anyone gets this 'tabs not working' idiosyncratic lunacy, go into the store and ask to see personal items,
(I bought a grenade), it somehow trips something and the tabs work again.
I don't know if it has to be a grenade but it did the trick.
Why they jammed up and this simple act frees tabs off I don't know; but it worked.
We don't know when it happens or what triggers it.
But apparently it is a real (yet uncommon) bug and the workaround has been confirmed working.