Photoshop :: How To Remove Letters Pasted Over A Photo

Making early steps in Photoshop, my little sister put a lettering over a photo, worked with filters,etc, and then properly flattened image and saved it as jpg.

All looks nice but she did it on the original instead of working with a copy . As a result , the photo, which is important for the family archive, now has this lettering all over and we don't know how to clean it up.
The letters are semi transparent with no sharp edges, the photo underneath is partly visible.

I 've tried to select letters and do something with filters, but the parts of the photo visible under the letters, are with different texture and colours and and I've achieved nothing - the letters are almost impossible to select properly. Even when selected more or less properly and treated with filters/layer transparency/etc they are still clearly visible, only their colour and saturation changes...

Tried everything within my limited Photoshop skills incl, trying to find any History palette which to use to reverse all lettering done over the photo but History was not saved.

It is a digital photo,so, there is no film to scan and have a clean original...

Could someone with Photoshop skills better than mine, please, tell me how to remove this text from the photo - it is an important part of our family photo archive and I'm desperate to restore it to the original condition.

I have Photoshop 5.5