Being fairly new to this myself, I think I understand what you are saying. I have had trouble getting the vocals to "sit" in the rest of the mix as well. From listening to your examples, what I get from it is that you want the singer's voice to be "up front" in the mix, and the effects to sort of be "behind," to give it a big sound, but you don't want the vocals to sound too loud and "stick out" from the rest of the song. If I'm on the right track as to what you are looking for, here are some techniques I use that may help you.
The best thing I have found to make the vocals "sit" in the mix is to roll off all the low frequencies on the vocal track(s), say from around 120Hz and below. Cutting out the low frequencies helps to make the vocals stand out, and keeps them getting mixed in with the drums/bass, etc, which makes the sound sort of muddy.
The other big thing I do is to use an effects bus, rather than applying the effects directly to the track. What I do is apply the compression and EQ to the vocal track, and put the effects ( i.e. reverb/delay ) on the effects bus. This allows you to adjust the level (volume) of the effects independent of the "dry" track. This also helps to achieve what I was talking about earlier, where the effects sound like they are "behind" the vocals.
As far as your compression settings, this is what I do. I set a relatively low Threshold, maybe -10db. I have an almost immediate Attack, and maybe 40/50ms of Release. Then, I add just enough gain to get the volume back to the level it was before. That helps to smooth out the vocals, so they aren't too loud or soft at any one point.
One thing I noticed about your examples is that during the chorus, what they did was to multi track the singer's voice. They had two tracks of vocals, and panned one to each side. Then during the verses, they just had the one track coming out of the center. That's why the vocals sound "bigger" during the chorus. Another trick you can do for the verse is to record a backing track, and keep it in the center, but turn the volume down significantly. This just makes the voice sound a little stronger, and it keeps the listener from noticing such a big dropoff from the chorus, where again the vocals are double tracked and panned to either side.
The final thing I forgot to mention is the reverb. What I so is pick a medium room-size, and then add about a 1/4 beat delay. That gives the vocals a good shimmering quality. It also helps to give the EQ a little boost around 3000/5000 Hz.
Hopefully some of this is what you are looking for and will be of some help.
If there are any questions please feel free to ask
