Found something that worked for OBJ files, but it's not what I'd call completely convenient. When importing, click on the option to import as "Facet Meshes" instead of as "Vertex Primitives". After the OBJ is imported, select it and go into the model room, and convert it to the vertex modeler. The UV map that was in the OBJ file will be intact. However, the mesh will be triangulated, so you will probably want to un-triangulate it from the menu in the model room.

I can duplicate reliably the UV map being distorted with selected OBJ meshes, and this does get around that. I haven't tried more complex models, say with multiple groups, but then, it seems to keep the UV map on more complex meshes, so it may not be a big problem over all.