Gah! Sorry Cedric - I missed your response!
I have indeed used the bottom menu, but I find it to be somewhat limiting for my needs. It's SUPER handy getting your head around the available options, but as professional coder, I generally find myself being more comfortable writing markup directly.
That said, I figured out another, and arguably better, approach to solving the problem I describe here, and I've documented that in another post: Dynamic Repeated Use of Same Snippet With Different Variables
In particular, I'd be keenly interested in your thoughts on that solution as regards the scoping issue I describe. =o)
In any case, thank you SO MUCH for responding, and for creating such a great product.