The day after my initial post I decided to try one more thing. Using one of the RWs that I hadn't been able to erase, I tried a new burn... and it worked! I've been happily reusing my disks ever since. For some reason the disk erase option works in the middle of a burn but not as a stand-alone function.
Incidentally, I tried your suggestion above and it doesn't work. Windows gives me the erase option and attempts the erase, but immediately returns a message that the erase has been unsuccessful. Oh well, there's no reason to erase a disk other than to use it again, and I've been able to use them again and again by burning new files over the existing ones. Still a mystery, but not one I'm losing sleep over now.