SPFx with jquery & sp-pnp-js: definitive project start activity?

Luis, thanks for all your help and advice.  I have already done all the sample projects you reference (they all work as expected and are lovely) and am now trying to do something "meaningful and on my own" which is where I am running into all these problems.

>>You're right. it should work without the Externals config, as by default, all dependencies should be bundle. However, keep in mind that is not a good idea to bundle "external" libraries like jQuery, PnP, etc, because they will be bundle per each webpart in the project, so, if you have different webparts using jQuery, jQuery will be bundle in each webpart<<

I'd read that before, so yes I am aware that in real-world circumstances I would want to exclude them from the bundle.  This is just me trying to get going, I will worry about generating "production ready" code and configurations when I get this all working! :)

First of all, adding to the externals did nothing to fix the issue I was having of the library not being found.  I tried a bunch of different ways to address it and nothing seemed to work.  The only thing that did work was explicitly npm uninstalling both the jquery and pnp libraries, and then installing them again in this order:

jquery

@types/jquery

typings

sp-pnp-js

After doing that, the code would transpile and I was able to run in the local workbench.  When I tried the SPOnline workbench, the web part showed up but the "pencil" icon would not give me the properties panel -- clicking it did nothing.  Problematic since the content to be displayed on the web part relies on a property setting to filter which list items to return and display.

>>I follow your instructions and is working fine for me<< 

Wish I could say the same.   Of course, "Well, it works ok on MY machine..." is one I've had to tell my clients a time or two :)

After work I shut down for the evening, and when I logged in again today and opened my project folder and did a simple gulp serve, I got the same "sp-pnp-js" not found that I got yesterday before I uninstalled and reinstalled everything.

Cannot Find Module errors

So I am back to where I was yesterday, unless I want to uninstall and reinstall all of the libraries again. Obviously not something I should have to do every day I work on this stuff, so something is still very wrong in my environment.

I used to be SO good at full trust solution web parts...*sigh*

My version numbers in the package.json (attached) are very similar to yours.