I'm having the same issue with Maplex (many items greyed out). I guess I can go the uninstall/reinstall route. When I installed it, I didn't put in an authorization code, but just checked that I wanted to evaluate it. I wonder if that is causing the problem?
I did do a reinstall and Maplex's behavior didn't change for me, so will submit a bug write up. Not sure I mentioned before, but I was using ArcEditor Single User.