Hi Bruce,
I need a file to say anything with certainty; perhaps my setup here is different.
When you like to work on UV Data, select only the UV tag, not the object itself – is that working for you?
Typically, you go to Attribute Manager>Mode>View Settings> Deformed Editing.
I have set up a file, and at one point, it wouldn't stay deformed. I have no idea if I reproduced your problems here, but the only way to get it back to work was with the Connect Object on top of it. After that worked, the Connect object was no longer needed with the setting mentioned above.
So, for anything else, please share the file, stripped to the bare minimum, to see the problem or share an example setup. I will have a look into it. (For the forum, it needs to be a c4d file and below 1MB; if you use a cloud service, please use Dropbox, Adobe, Apple, Wetransfer, or Google. If there is anything else I don't touch, thanks a lot.
All the best