ESDEMO Creation

I am a teacher and am attempting to get Enterprise Developer 2.2 installed and tested so I can use it for both Cobol and CICS development for my students. The software is installed (correctly, I believe) and all Cobol elements are behaving properly.

I am having an issue trying to create the demonstration CICS region ESDEMO. I believe this may be an SQL Server 2012 Express Configuration issue. The following is the info displayed from SQL Server Management Studio Help / About:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio            11.0.3128.0
Microsoft Analysis Services Client Tools        11.0.3128.0
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC)            6.1.7601.17514
Microsoft MSXML                                    3.0 5.0 6.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer                        9.11.9600.17691
Microsoft .NET Framework                        4.0.30319.18444
Operating System                                6.1.7601

I normally use Windows Authentication to access SQL Server Management Studio, and my ID does have both SysAdmin and DBAdmin authority - I can Create Database etc while in Management Studio.

I follow the procedure outlined in "To Define a New Region With an Existing Region Startup File". I have tried various formats when I specify the Database Server Instance - (local)\SQLEXPRESS is indicated in the documentation. My database instance is called SQLEXPRESS and this does seem to work. I have also tried manually specifying my machine name as shown when I sign on SQL Server Management Studio. Regardless of what I specify (assuming syntax is OK) when I create the ESDEMO region the Database State column shows "Connection Failed".

I read that the database is only created when I start the region for the first time so I always Cold Start after this. This churns for a while, but no messages are initially displayed - after a few minutes I get "CF0103E Error Querying Region Startup Progress on localhost". Nothing is displayed in the View Console display, and the title bar in both says CICS Region ESDEMO - Connection Failed.

I have checked in SQL Server Configuration Manager and all 3 protocols are enabled. SQL Server / SQLEXPRESS is running and so is SQL Server Browser. SQL Server Agent is not - does it need to be? I tried to start it manually and it would not, but from what I have read this is not supported with SQL Express and is not needed.

So, I have several questions:

1) Did SQL Server 2012 need to have any particular parameters specified when it was installed? I have read about Mixed Mode Authentication, is this needed? I tried signing onto SQL Server with SQL Authentication but it did not work - I suspect that Mixed Mode was not used during installation.

2) Is SQL Server Agent needed?

3) I have Micro Focus SEE Monitor and Listener Log On tabs specified to Log On as "This Account" / Local Service - is this correct? Should I be using Local System Account? Or something else?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.