I am also determining ET from remote sensing (Landsat 7/8 and airborne data). In my opinion,the easiest way to determine albedo, LST, emissivity NDVI... is by using "band math". There you should include the formulae of your parameter and the software will give you a raster of your variable.
Is that what you are asking for? I hope it can help you.
In my opinion ERDAS is useful to highlight the relationship between variables, but the final models are not user-friendly (lot of lines, boxes, etc...). I have generated toolboxes in ArcGIS in order to the users select their inputs and run the models. They do not see the relationship between variables but it is more user friendly instead.
Yes, but at the end, you need to compare the results of solar radiation and ET based on LULC classes, for that you need to use ENVI which have accurate classification algorithms.