… When I select the dynamic tool from the palette, the lyrics arrow box appears to the left of the staff with its 4 silver arrows …

… I click a few more times on the score, tools palette, or on the lyrics arrows (and nothing happens) …

From your description it sounds like you are trying to make the triangles go away (by clicking on the triangles) - right?

There is nothing wrong with the 4 positioning triangles.

No need to make the triangles go away.

The 4 triangles are available in both the Lyrics Tool and the Expression Tool.

And the triangles work in the same way in both tools:

1st triangle (leftmost triangle): Drag the triangle up/down to “globally” change the over-all vertical positioning in all staves and systems.

2nd triangle: Drag the triangle up/down to change the vertical positioning for all the measures in the entire document, in that staff only.

3rd triangle: Change the vertical positioning in that staff only, in that system only.

4th triangle (rightmost triangle): Change the vertical positioning for the next item you are about to enter.

Thank you for the quick reply.  I figured out last night - I was using 2 monitors originally, then went to 1 monitor.  For some reason, Finale was opening windows "somewhere" but not on my monitor.  When I returned to 2 monitors I saw the windows I needed.