Solution Found:
It was Firefox, or a setting within Firefox that I'm not going to try research. I switched to Google Chrome and everything cleared right up.
Firefox was not allowing the Eylsium website pages to display the button at the bottom to create an account.
In other words, I was able to enter my user name and pw and email address, submit it to Elysium, get an email confirmation, verify my email, link back to Elysium from that email, but never have my user name and pw accepted at the Control Panel all because that little button never appeared on the bottom of the page.
You may have had success with Firefox working on this site. Like i said, it may have been some setting or other. I was able to recreate this issue several times. GL to all who follow.