Not sure what happened to two of the 328p's, but I now have two, one with the original bootloader, and one with the optiloader. One untouched (factory fresh). The two "bricked" I will wait and deal with once the crimpers arrive as I have to construct a HV programming cable. Having just built a JTAG cable using small needle nose pliers, I'm not going to build any more cables until I get a proper crimping tool.
Regardless, I believe I set the fuses wrong, and perhaps set some lock bits. We'll see. But the optiloader seems to be working ok.
Obviously, debugwire has some bugs in it, but JTAG is working wonderfully on my atmega2560 units. Had to use ISP to program the JTAG fuse, but other than that, JTAG is definitely the way to go if the processor supports it.
I tried the UNO as a programmer on the 328's but never got that to work. No worries.