I just uploaded an example of my situation right now. The top row of TextFields has embedFonts set to false and the bottom row has embedFonts set to true. When set to true the TextField border becomes very small and the displayed text is shifted up and left aligned to the center of the original TextField. The TextField textWidth properties are also skewed as you can see the alignment of the TextFields is off in the lower example.
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/4902/embeddedfontweirdnesslt2.jpg
Using a bandaid delay function that waits for .5 seconds between setting the embedFont to true and the defaultTextFormat before arranging them on stage seems to improve the issue slightly.
In timeline development I could insert an extra frame, to wait a frame for some TextField properties to be set but I don’t know how I can achieve the same effect in straight actionscript.
I tried using an enter frame even to check for the TextField’s width or textWidth properties but they never changed.
The last attempt I made was to add the items to the stage with visible false, then arrange them and set visible true but alas that did not work either.
