I am not able to get my player to show the control buttons. I'm using mp3 files and they are local to my client's website . I've contacted the template developer and they've given me some suggestions but nothing has worked thus far.

I've tried:

span.jwcontrolbar button {background:transparent!important;} and span.jwcontrolbar button {background-color:transparent!important;}

to no avail

Link to screenshot: imgur.com/3LFJm4f

It is a conflict with your template indeed.
They are using !important which overrides all the extension's values.

Remove the !important parts from these css classes.