Ugh. After reading around a bit more I came across this:
so apparently this is expected. Lame.
Update:
Hold the phone. The command I actually wanted is not an apply group, but the wildcard range command:
So much better than interface-range. To hit the linecards I wanted, it looks like this:
wildcard range set interfaces ge-[0-8]/0/[35,36] unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members VLAN
Where VLAN is the VLAN (or whatever) I wanted to apply.