So the wiki on the help page says that the actor value changes based on a multiplier of the player's level. It goes on to say that the value changes based on when the player first enters the zone and encounters this character. However, no ammount of zone switching or resummoning, will allow creatures to alter their stats based on character level.

For testing purposes I have used summon flame atronach and set it's level at a multiple equal to my characters, and each time it was summoned it died in the same number of hits as the non-leveled version. To ensure that I wasn't messing up in the editing somehow, I provided it with a rediculous health offset value during one of the tests and confirmed that editing the creature in this way provided a noticible effect.

I even tried creating a leveled character to attach to the summoned creature to no avail.

What exactly am I missing here?

look up some of the other threads/posts about commanded (summoned/reanimated) actors

there are severe limitations and abundant disappointments where summoning and reanimating are concerned