My car is a L30/M20 with the Z21 style trim group.
So, there was only a foam gasket on the rears, no rubber gasket at all between the body & bezels? The car was recently repainted, and I'm working with the shop on reassembly details. We talked about mounting the bezels directly against the body, but the body shop doesn't want to risk any damage to the paint (and I don't blame them). I have a set of rubber gaskets from the 80's that were on the car for a while. They are slightly thicker than the current repro gaskets and seem to fit better. The shop is going to install these. And, yes, the plastic lights are loose if no foam gasket is used, so we'll need to use the foam gaskets on all 4 lights.
My originals don't have much pitting, but the chrome is very dull, and the bottoms of the rear bezels have been heavily 'sandblasted' from 160k miles of debris coming off the back tires. I had thought about using them, but they just aren't nice enough. I know what you mean about losing the details when re-chroming. I have a top notch chrome shop fairly close, so I will probably end up eventually rechroming the originals.