Yes, other areas are active too. If there is no Homunculus. We know we have minds. To have a mind is to be conscious, to have feelings, experiences. If there were no experiences going on, there would be no mind there.
Feelings are only feelings if they are felt.
It would be the mind of someone else living in my head. So we invent another mind, not the conscious one that has no idea where its ideas and actions come from, but another one, very much like it, except unconscious, and IT's the one it all came from. You're right that that's homuncular, in that it also doesn't explain anything, but just attributes it to another mind in your head.