After a day of troubleshooting, it turns out that my static meshes were soft object references to an older animation sequence that I was no longer using. I only found this out after I added the static meshes to a level sequence, added track staticmeshcomponent0, mobility and set it to static. While hitting the play button in the sequence, it looks fine (static). While running the game, it would disappear and attach to an animated object, and upon ending the simulation, errors would pop up for each static mesh I added to the sequence and changed their mobility to static…this is where it showed me the soft object reference to the old animation sequence.
The bizarre thing is that I would bring in a static mesh from 3ds Max via datasmith or FBX, having no relation to the older animation sequence (or newer), but apparently they would automatically become soft object references to that old, unused animation sequence. Even just bringing in a UE cube would reference it. Also, objects that would behave normally (static mobility would remain static while in gameplay) that I would use to copy, their pasted copy would revert back to referencing the animation sequence eventually; sometimes it took 15 copies before it would happen, others on the first copy.
Deleting the unused, old animation sequence that was being used to reference solved this issue.