Burbman 
OK, figured out what the issue was on this. Next to the latch striker located on the body, there is a rubber bumper that is spring loaded. This is what provides the initial push of the trunk lid when you release the latch. When the latch engages the striker, it's important the the body of the latch mechanism contact that spring loaded bumper. What happened was the latch went out of adjustment and was hitting the striker at the rearmost part, allowing the latch body to miss that rubber bumper. So the lid latched and released properly, but would not "pop" without the help of the spring loaded bumper.
Sorry for the blurry pic, but here I have the striker off of the body and am holding it up to the latch on the trunk lid.
The spring loaded rubber bumper is the big black square in the picture. You can see how the latch is engaging the striker, enabling the latch body to slide down next to the bumper instead of hitting it and compressing the spring. In this pic, the latch should be engaging the striker further down so that latch body comes down on top of the bumper and compresses the spring.
There's really no fore/aft adjustment on the striker, so that got re-installed in its original position. The latch just attaches to the sheet metal on the inside of the trunk lid, so the fix was to insert a large pry bar by the attaching point and tweak the orientation of latch, so with the trunk lid open, you are moving the rearmost part of the latch downward. This allows it to hit the striker further forward, allowing the latch body to compress the spring loaded bumper when the lid closes.
This would have been a 5-min fix had I known this ahead of time, since the rear bumper cover needs to come off to access the bolts for the striker plate, which in the end didn't need to be removed.
Click the pic below for quick video of what the "trunk pop" looks like now. This was a trial run before I got the tail lights back in.
