Panel layouts occasionally get scrambled after a big update. pearOS's Welcome app has a one-click fix for this.
Open the pearOS Welcome app and click Fix Layout.
This copies the default pearOS Plasma/GTK config (panels, dock, top menu, theme) from /etc/skel/.config back over your user config.
Heads up: this resets your panel/dock/theme customizations back to pearOS defaults - it will not touch your files, just the desktop layout and theming.
If a file fails to copy, the app will tell you which one - log out and back in, then try again.