Scott,

I understand your unwillingness to use a nail or other device to raise the strings enough to use a slide (although, in my experience, trying to use any slide on a guitar with a low action yields less than satisfactory results)

I think it was Mac who recommended pre-bending the string then fading the sound in as you release the bend (or conversely, fading in as you bend the string to raise the note) That approach would probably work in both of these songs because I didn't hear any long pitch changes (longer than you could bend the string)

Another approach, since you are a techie, is to program the G5 pedal as a whammy pedal and use it with the swell patch that does such a good job of replicating the steel guitar fade-in. If you can fade and change pitch at the same time, you've got 90% of the steel guitar sound (except for the ability to play chords, with some notes remaining the same while others rise or fall.)

If you have a harmony patch in that G5, I've noticed that some harmony devices do a good job of emulating a steel guitar (holding one note the same while the other note rises or falls). It only works with chordal harmonies though, scalic harmonies always change both notes. In order to obtain chordal harmonies, your device needs to have a way to follow the chords in the song. (The Digitech HarmonyMan pedal does exactly that in case you want to buy more gear.)

this demo shows how the pedal accomplishes the pedal steel thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr1o0B6n9xE
starting around 2:30 it demos how one note stays the same while the other rises or falls
(to the best of my knowledge, this is the only harmony pedal that can do this... the others are scale-based)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0