Are you sure they didn't repeat before the firmware upgrade? They would have shown up in the "Neighbor Table" (and still should). If they didn't have any devices routing through them (in the list at the end, assuming you're talking about the undocumented getChildAndRouteInfo page), that's a different issue but doesn't mean they weren't repeaters. I've never heard of anyone seeing these as end devices (not repeaters), though that would be a fantastic way to solve the routing problems you are now seeing and could explain why you didn't before. But it would be a very unusual discovery. (Perhaps that is indeed all you mean--they could repeat but just didn't, also mostly a good scenario.)
I'm not sure about firmware versions, but people have definitely found the old hardware revisions of these bulbs to be more problematic than the newer ones (I'm assuming the hardware is different; the branding certainly is, and probably also the firmware). It is unfortunate but at least good to know that a firmware update seems to have made things worse here. 
I really wish they'd still let North American users crossgrade to the ZLL firmware so these were usable on Hue or make good on their Zigbee 3.0 promise so we could do the same now that Hue is supposedly compatible. Until then, I'd definitely avoid these unless you have a separate hub/network to run these on, the only for-sure workaround at the moment.
