Thanks haga0054 for your suggestions. In my case, the select menu in the div exists already, the ajax update simply loads the options list. I tried the trigger('create') on the parent div as you suggested:
document.getElementById('oxeNodeRow24').trigger('create');
But it still does not work

. I have searched and found quite a few posts on stackoverflow and even
jquery mobile forum about mobile css style lost after ajax update (without
even Wicket in the picture), so it appears the problem is unrelated to
wicket. As I stated in the original post, I have tried various different solutions
people posted online, without success unfortunately. Am I missing something in my attempts or is there anything else other than the java script solutions I appended above?
watusiware was correct...we have a Java app and use Apache Wicket framework as part of the requirement. Starting from Wicket 6.3 (which is the version I use), Wicket actually has JQuery under the hood for all AJAX behaviors, so there is no inherent conflict there, but that's why you see all those wicket ajax scripts included.