Apps/folders have disappeared from home screen

Out of the blue, the app icons disappeared from my navigation bar at the bottom of my Home Screen. So I reset my Home Screen and discovered I needed to reorganize ALL my over abundance of apps into folders. As I almost finished this grueling task, I realize that some of my folders have disappeared from my Home Screen. I can see them in the App Library, but not on the Home Screen. I don’t have the time to search through 200 apps and figure out which ones are missing. I’ve read that sometimes this is caused by trying to put widgets in folders, but all my apps had previously been in folders, so I’m not sure why it would just be a problem now. If that is the case though, how am I supposed to know which apps are just apps and can be put in folders and which apps are actually widgets? I’ve spent 3 hours on this mess and I’m ready to switch to an Android at this point.