Been following the thread, decided to pitch in.
I've found that the ESP32's do not work well with the other devices on my network. When I put all the ESP32's on their own router, the freaky-deaky network thingies went away.
Before making a WiFi.connect() issue a WiFi.disconnect(). The WiFi.disconnect(), if connected, will cause a WiFi disconnect and will cause the WiFi stack space to be reset to its default values.