FiPy stuck on old Wifi credentials - unresponsive serial after a few secs

[dnear1]

I've had issues with my FiPy, mostly related to trying to develop at home as well as remotely. I updated the firmware from 1.18.1.9 to 1.18.1.10 yesterday to see if that helped, but things are going south. I verified that in Pybytes, I have my current(home) WIFI credentials as the only available option under settings -> Wifi Credentials. When I flash, I use "erase flash file system" and Force Update PyBytes registration both checked. Flash completes successfully.
After restarting, The "heartbeat" continues unabated, but in Atom/Pymakr plugin, the terminal stops responding after a dozen seconds. I'm able to type import pycom and pycom.wifi_ssid() and get the response of my old (away from home) credentials. It stops responding shortly afterwards and no further characters are echoed.
I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 on my laptop and connected via USB TTL.
Is the heartbeat part of a different running subsystem than the REPL interface?
What else do I have to do to ensure Pybytes downloads the correct WIFI credentials?