After further experimenting, I suspect that one of my ESP32S is not functioning correctly. I tried the “Light touch” build and one of the devices causes the LEDs to both blink and flicker in a random kind of way similar to the jittery servos. The other one seems to work ok and I can send signals from the “jittery” ESP32S to the other (the cap touch wire works but there is no feedback of the sent colour as the ‘send’ LED is flickering). I believe the signals are received in the reverse direction (the onboard blue LED works in this way), but the LEDs give no clues!
Plug in just one, connect to the captive portal, write down the 10-digit number presented (mine also matches the numbers in the WiFi SSID) and type in the WiFi password. Unplug it, plug in the second device, connect and write the number (just in case), then if it asks you, type the first number in the “remote device” box, and also the WiFi credentials. Good luck!