Hi man,
I don't know it this can be the problem, but inside the console server you can find hibernate.cfg.xml inside WEB-INF/lib/jbpm-bam-<<version>>.jar//hibernate.cfg.xml
This has by default "create" and may be interfering with the configuration you have in persistence.xml.
I think this will be fixed after 5.1.Final, as it was here:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/jbpm/blob/5.1.x/jbpm-bam/src/main/resources/hibernate.cfg.xml
And now it is not in master anymore:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/jbpm/tree/master/jbpm-bam/src/main/resources
The console uses audit tables (ProcessInstanceLog, VariableInstanceLog, NodeInstanceLog) to show the information, and not runtime tables. So if these tables are re-created, you will se running processes but no data in audit tables.
About the human tasks, check the persistence.xml inside WEB-INF-lib/jbpm-human-tasks-<<version>>.jar//META-INF to see if it is in create.
Regards,
Demian