Well, further tinkering revealed the answer. If this was clearly covered somewhere in the manual, then forgive me for having wasted anyone's time.
My camera was in "eye sensor" VF mode when I applied these settings previously. Evidently the camera has to be in viewfinder-only VF mode in order for the selections for the 2 viewfinder modes to "take". So I cycled thru the VF modes to get to viewfinder-only mode, then cycled with the front lever to both EVF and OVF modes. I then went back to the shooting menu and verified the selected items to display for each mode. Voila, now my choices were displayed in each VF configuration.
I really didn't change any settings, so I'm not sure exactly what action on my part "fixed" things. It may have simply been cycling through all the modes and opening and closing the custom display submenu in the shooting menu that somehow did it.
Odd behavior.
On another note, I have to say now that I've had the camera for a bit, I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'm having very little difficulty with the AF as yet, which seems to be the primary complaint everyone has about this camera. I can't say for sure whether the firmware upgrade did anything for the AF, as was speculated. The image quality from this camera is really, really good. My only previous experience of APS-C sensors was in the D300, and this camera is vastly better in color rendition and subjective overall image quality. There's a creamy smoothness that was utterly lacking in the D300.