I think its working again for me... here's what worked.
Logged out of both Facetime and iMessage on my Macbook Pro. Shut down.
On iPhone, removed old email addresses in Facetime and iMessage related to @me.com address. Also removed my @icloud.com address as no one contacts me through it anyway. In iMessage, turned off send as SMS option... actually unchecked all options. Signed out from both Facetime and iMessage on iPhone and rebooted.
Logged back into to Facetime first on iPhone; confirmed only phone number and 2 correct emails were listed.
Logged back into iMessage and waited for activation process to occur; then confirmed it correctly showed phone number and correct email addresses. Then turned on other options (send as SMS; group messaging, read receipts, etc).
Sent a few tests to other iMessage users that were not having issues. All came through correctly as iMessage (not txt) and correctly showed as read or delivered based on recipient choosing to show read receipts or not.
Back on MBP added iMessage account (and verified newer, shorter list of email addresses); waited for it to activate; did the same for Facetime.
With that... all appears to be working for me. Will do the same process on the wife's iPhone and MBP later tonight and update this thread if it works or not...