I am brand new to Dashcode. I've created the textbook 'Dashboard Widget Tutorial', using the Countdown template. When I tell Dashcode to Run the widget, the widget window appears briefly. (It disappears after less than a second.) After the widget disappears, dashcode reports it as running. If I ask Dashcode to Pause, it acknowledges with the log message 'Pausing at the next opportunity'. There's no further feedback until I typically tell Dashcode to Stop after several minutes.
If I Deploy to Dashboard, the widget works OK. That's my current work-around, although I'm not sure how I'll fare when I want to debug widgets.
I am using Dashcode 3.0.5 on Lion (10.7.4).
There's an existing question on Stack Overflow First widget works in Dashcode but not when deployed. That is not what's happening to me, I have the 'opposite' problem.