Ok so I’m replying to my own post with the fix I figured out.
First make sure you have your sequence object in scene, and have all additional event receivers set to the objects that you want to call.
Next, in the sequence window, you need to add the event track, and key in an event. Right click the event keyframe and add the event name (!NOTE! the name here has to exactly match the custom event name in the receiver object).
Finally, make sure that you don’t mess with “Event Receivers” in the sequencer window. Leave that empty.
I was getting hung up on that last thing to not touch. It appears as though messing with that set of receivers may overwrite the one set in the editor. The receivers list in the sequencer is limited to objects that are used in the sequence, which may be why there’s a discrepancy. Either way, this worked for me and hopefully will help others out there.