Bumping this, though I feel this is probably futile. I just can't figure out what's happening.

Short recap: When I update my packages in workbench, browsing works but edits do not show. When I update the same files in the /vendor folder of a project that requires the two packages, browsing does show the edits.

Well, as I explain what was actually happening, it sounds pretty dumb, but this might help someone in the future.

Project A's workbench had two packages. One packages required the other. THIS IS A LAZY SETUP, but it was one that was working until I ran 'composer update' on the dependent package. When the application started up and processed the autoload files, it sequentially loaded three copies of Laravel (app, package 1, then package 2) and two copies of package 1 (package 1 then package 2).

Because package 2 loaded last, the application (workbench installation) was using that version of package 1 -- effectively ignoring any changes made to my actual package 1 workbench.

Anyway, I fixed this by deleting the vendor folder from the package 2 workbench.

Let this be a lesson to anyone else who does something this lazy in the future.