How to restore recent files back to their folders?
Solution 1:
From what I understand, "Recents" are recently accessed files. I have disabled this function on my system. If you have backed up you drive or some folder(s) to iCloud in some way then I would suspect the using "iCloud Drive" instead of "Recents" could give you the folder structure containing you backed up.
At this point these are just semi-educational guesses as I neither use iCloud for file backup or have "Recents" active.