"Recent Files" Widget is empty most of the time

EDIT: I just realized my iPad is still running iOS 16 even tho I have automatic updates turned on. I'm going to update to 17.2 and see if that fixes it.

I have never been able to get the Recent Files Widget to work consistently on my iPad Mini 6 running latest OS. The Widget is usually just empty on my home screen (not black/white, like many other widgets randomly end up on both my iPad and iPhone, which is usually fixable with a restart). The Widget seems to work fine on my iPhone 15 Pro, even shows Recent Files that I open on my iPad if they are on my iCloud drive.

I have tried removing the Widget, pointing to different folders (including the actual system-named "Recents" folder, which is the default, as well as multiple other iCloud and local folders), restarting my iPad, opening multiple files inside of whatever folder the Widget is currently pointing to (both opening in the Files app and opening in e.g. Acrobat for pdfs), checking permissions, etc. Occasionally recent files do appear, but it seems to be random (sometimes they reappear after a restart, sometimes a restart has no effect). 9/10 times that I look at the Widget, it is blank/empty. The problem occurs regardless of which size of the Widget I choose (# of files shown).

Has anyone else had this problem?