Hi James,
Don't despair just yet
There
is an awful lot of data, opinions, information etc on this long thread (and indeed all the rest of RCuniverse/RCgroups!), and it is almost completely surplus to your requirements
. The more I think about it, the more your problem probably is the ESC - hopefully its calibration to the receiver, but failing that a faulty ESC - so don't worry that you haven't anyone else with whom to swap receivers etc.
In the old days, receivers always had their own battery, plugged into the slot called BATT. These days and in this case, the ESC has a built in BEC (Battery Elimination Circuit) which just provides the ~5volts needed by the receiver. However, the ESC may have a weedy/faulty BEC, which could cause the receiver to be flaky, twitch signals etc.
But before you assume that, you should really exhaust the throttle/receiver calibration thing -
hopefully someone else will chime in with exactly how to do it on this ESC.
When you pressed the easy-setup button, did you try (i) holding it down for a while, or (ii) having it already held down as you connected the battery? (i.e. hold it down, then power up whilst keeping it held down) That may well be the method to get into the calibration mode, from which you do the hold full throttle till flash/change/beep, then hold full brake etc...
BFK