Those aren't touch screen buttons. Clear in any non-frontal image of which there's plenty.
Seems to still depend on some state that they show on the display, makes it seems like you still need to hit "invisible" buttons in the iPad UI to start setting the temperature with the hardware "lever", kind of defeating the purpose. But maybe again it's just the website/images/videos being unclear.
Hopefully you can activate it by changing the temperature. Or maybe double pressing the "climate" physical button.