If they work in RA but not in ES try to unzip the roms...for some reason some zipped roms don't work in ES or try to setup AEL...I never used ES again since setting up AEL...but never uninstalled it...ES is pointing to same assets as AEL so you don't have to keep 2 copies of artwork,it's easier to have roms within Kodi UI..
thanks Mario77, I used to have AEL working (with the standalone addon) but its all broken now I have the repo installed. I will just use retroarch on its own for now.