Thanks for you suggestions Marco, but I still can't figure out how to get
the "styles"/"emphasis" displayed in a '.org' file buffer.

As mentioned before, the variable "org-fontify-emphasized-text" is set to
`t' (non-nil).

Documentation says this about that variable:

        Non-nil means fontify *bold*, /italic/ and _underlined_ text.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks,

-Kenneth