Lightroom has a very easy white balance tool if you have anything white in the picture. Otherwise it can be a bit tricky, but just play with the slide bars and see what you can come up with. I too, prefer to white balance there then go into photoshop for more editing, like cleaning up backscatter and such.
In photoshop however, the levels adjustment is an easy white balance.
I find, that viewing photos in Lightroom sometimes doesn't give the photo all the "vibrance" you may see in other programs. I think it has to do with it doing "virtual work" with the image. Not sure. But I use the histogram and when I either export or open in another program I usually think the photo looks better.
Even more so when printed.
After further review of the OP, I think you are misunderstanding or expecting too much from the advantage of using RAW. It does save all of the information, but it also doesn't do any pre-set adjustments, so you are pretty much looking at the photo only according to your exposure settings, which do affect the "look" of the image.
As asked before, are you using strobe(s)? What ISO are you using? White balance may not be the only adjustment you need to make, but a good photograph taken in RAW shouldn't need a massive amount of adjustment, but it won't have some of the enhancements that the G-9 has "built in" by using underwater mode.
Maybe try some of your camera's pre-settings and see if you like the pictures better and if so do that. If you aren't compiling stock images to sell later then there is no harm in using Jpeg.
