I created like you did, a dialog ring, and when I change its label, the corresponding text of its refernces/property nodes changed, as expected.
Apparenty something must have happened to the control. Initially (early 2004), my application was being developed with LV 7.0. So the ring must have been created with LV 7.0. Later in May, the application was converted to version 7.1. and recently (about Jan 13), to LV 7.1.1.