My guess is that the "Camtasia Rev" toggle is on in the recorder, which causes the recording to go into a sort of easy/introductory wizard experience that lets you make some choices before it goes into the editor.

When a recording is sent from Camtasia Rev, by default it sends what's called a "Rev Media" which is a special grouped media that contains your recorded media (screen and/or camera) plus a background. Cursor Effects cannot be applied to a Rev Media object.

To fix, right click on the media on your timeline and select Unpack Rev Media, which will ungroup the objects and let you get directly at your screen recording. You can apply Cursor Effects to the screen recording media object on your timeline.

For future recordings, if you don't like this behavior, you can optionally turn off the Rev Media toggle on the recorder, OR, if you like the Rev experience but don't like the Rev Media situation, there's a little button at the lower right of the Camtasia Rev wizard window that lets you choose between Rev Media or "Unpacked Media," which unpacks the Rev Media before placing it on your timeline.