Thanks for the help. I finally got everything sorted out. Didn't realize how deep I would have to dig into the nested component/group to change layer status. Thought just left selecting the whole group would be enough.
I think what really messed things up is that when working on one layer I would notice something wrong with a component on another layer and start editing it without explicitly changing layers, so now the new stuff would end up on the wrong layer. I guess I expected sketchup to automatically switch the working layer when I went in to edit components on particular layers. Seems like layers in sketchup aren't quite the same as they are in photoshop.