It turns out the problem was in my shared library and the /usr/local/lib directory works just fine for my custom widget 
resolution.  However, apBuilder does not look in /usr/local/lib for my shared library when I build the application, only
 when it is resolving my custom widgets.  Is there a single location that would satisfy both?

For those interested, my shared library referenced a global variable in my application.  This caused my custom widgets 
to not display dynamically in appbuilder.  It did not matter that my widgets did not access the global variable, only 
that the reference was compiled into my shared library.