Hmm, i've checked althor1138's COLD edition and I see what you mean about the cone of light missing in two shots facing R2D2 on the special edition releases.

However, after watching that scene in the garage numerous times, I think that in terms of visual continuety, the SE releases are an improvement on the GOUT and japanese laserdisc version, the reason being that in all the other shots facing R2D2 without leia in the shot, the cone of light is not visible on all the versions.

So this means that with the GOUT and Japanese release, the cone is not visible when facing R2D2 without leia in the shot for the whole garage scene apart from two specific shots facing R2D2 where the cone suddenly appears out of nowhere, which doesn't make much sense IMHO.

In the SE releases the cone of light is never visible when looking directly at R2D2 without leia in the shot, which in terms of visual continuety makes much more sense. The cone is only visible when the hologram of leia is visible in the SE releases, which also makes sense to me. This looks more to me like a correction by Lucasfilm to maintain continuety in the scene rather than forgetfulness IMHO.