Okay, just tested this with my priest and popped a renew on myself. As you can see from my screenshot the macro doesn't show the buff counter but the direct spell does.
Will try without nUI to see if it is the same problem and also with inline auras which I used to use before I persuaded Scott to add the functionality
Edit:
Okay with inline auras it works fine so there must be something they are looking at that is different from nUI. Here's a screenshot.