Perhaps you are not using them correctly. FOP2 controls *your* extension. So, you must be sitting right next to the phone configured with that extension (or have that softphone working), as most of the actions buttons will work with your extension first. If you originate a call, that extension will ring and then things start to happen. If you are not near that extension, or if that extension is not registered, actions will fail (except for hangup or record).
The other posibility is that your manager permissions are not correct, in that case the way to troubleshot is to look at the fop2 output while performing actions and look at the events. You can stop the fop2 service and start in debug mode with the following commands:
service fop2 stop
/usr/local/fop2/fop2_server -X 15
And then login and try to perform some actions, and inspect the output for clues.