I finally fixed this. Instead of assigning tab panel to a variable and putting it in my returned panel, I had to define it explicitly in the returned panel. See below. Couldn't tell you why it didn't work before, but its fixed.
return Ext.create('Ext.panel.Panel',
{
border: false,
layout:
{
type: 'vbox',
align: 'stretch'
},
items:
[
userTree,
{
xtype: 'tabpanel',
name: 'historyTabs',
id: 'historyTabs',
flex: 1,
activeTab: 0,
dockedItems: historyToolbar,
items: [
actionsGrid,
{
title: 'Test',
border: false,
html: 'Testing'
}
]
}
]
});