WaveLab Essentials - I never used it, but I would imagine it's just WaveLab without all the bells and whistles. If that's the case, it should work fine.
There is a bit of a learning curve... Even with WL's "Wizards" so keep that manual close.
Frame accurate editing is simply being able to place audio files and start/stop/pause points along
a time line with frame accuracy (1 CDA second = 75 frames).
In WaveLab, here's what I would suggest - Open each sound file individually and crop the heads & tails leaving 12-15 blank frames at the head of each file. A lot of CD players will "cut off" the first several frames, so this is just a "play it safe" move. You're only looking at less than a fifth of a second, so the audio will still be in the "hit go and it starts" window.
The PW log is the "paper" version of the editor - It's a verification of sorts. Many replicators won't touch a project without one. WaveLab prints them. I would imagine WLE should also. Include it with your project.
WL has a "Create Basic CD" (or something similarly named) function that can take your files and throw them together as a CD project. There are a lot of parameters here - Pre and post pauses, head pause, spacing between stop & start points, Silence before first track, silence after each track, silence after last track, etc. All measured in CD frames. If you have 12 frames at the head of every track, you'll want to set the silence before first track and silence before any track to zero.
The neat thing is that with a Basic project, you can normally convert that into an audio montage, which will allow you much more flexibility AND a visual representation - But there are SO many parameters on every little thing, I'm going to stop here and suggest a good read through the manual. It'd take hours to go over everything, and I'd probably forget something immensely important.