Did you get any further with this?
I have been deploying a new system and have been configuring my environment mostly in the vsphere software client.
Upon logging back into my vsphere web client, I find that only my single vcenter vm exists in the inventory and none of my distributed switches.
I found this after noticing that one of my vmkernel ports on a distributed switch was showing no link status in the software client so I went to investigate in the web client.
Also using the vcenter appliance.