Thanks Krileon. I understood that having it within another form wasn't a good idea. It disappears even when it's outside a form. There is, however, another form on the page...I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it though.

the "update" button is what appears after the pencil icon is clicked. I ended up just building a save method into the model of my component, but I'll experiment with this again in the future