When doing a clean install today I had some issues with string-edit (renamed to string-edit-at-point) and evil-diff packages (removed from melpa) not being installed. Adding package recipes to the spacemacs configuration installs these packages (hopefully there will be an official fix some time). Or if you have a backup, you can copy the packages from the emacs.d (or .config/emacs) elpa directory in that backup https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/15648#issuecomment-1312533348
It would seem these package issues may already be resolved in the latest Spacemacs commits.