I just decided to use the pop up comments instead of the regular because its easier for me. The smilies were working with the regular comments, but they wont work with the pop- up comments. I'm using <?php wp_grins(); ?> right before text area and the smilies show up in my admin panel, but not on the pop-up comments page.

you may have missed something in the code. Make sure you have it in correctly in both areas