After following @wodin’s instructions here the version shown was (temporarily) updated to the newest! And I was able to increment up to expo 36 using expo upgrade.
Now, however, the next run of expo upgrade comes back with the same "upgrade" is not an expo command. See "expo --help" for the full list of commands that was the outcome of my original problem loop. And expo --version shows that I’m somehow back at 2.1.3 