It's weird that the regular front loader calls for a standard electrolytic and yours calls out a bipolar. But if it's on the board then they must have had a reason. Typically those caps are used if the design calls for an unpolaraized cap but the capacitance is too large for ceramic caps to be available/cheap enough
You can make an unpolaraized by tying 2 electrolytics in series (+ together I believe, you'll want to verify that). You'll use the series calculation to get your values(which is the same as the resistor parallel calculation). It's likely to be some value that's hard to find and may not fix your issue. At any rate, digikey and mouser should have an exact replacement.

That cap looks to be part of the lockout chip. Can lockout issues cause freezing like you're seeing or just the blinkies?