actually we had a similar issue and couldn't see the "publish" button at all, which usually should be here:

The solution Odoo support provided, was that:

This is because the Website Publisher view is not configured as it should be. To fix this view, please take the following steps:
- First, activate the developer mode
- Open Settings → Click Technical at the top of the screen → Select Views under the User Interface section
- Search for Website Publisher > Click the view without an external ID
- Click Action → Click Compare / Reset → Click Reset to File Version (hard reset) → Click Reset View at the bottom left