Ok if this happens to anyone else, what you do is go to
"My Documents" on your desktop, then
"EA Games" then
"Ultima Online Legacy"
"User Data"
Pick which account is having the problem
Pick which shard
Pick which character
Move this characters folder to your desktop
Reload UO and it will create a new folder for them. Copy the file "skillgrp.mul" from this folder then trash it.
Trash the "skillgrp.mul" file that is in your old folder (on the desktop) and paste in the one you copied, and move the whole folder back into your character list with the other characters.
This should preserve your macros and desktop setup but give you the new style skill group list.
Possibly you could instead of moving the characters folder initially, just delete the skillgrp.mul file and it will create a new one, but I didn't try doing this.