Different companies (at the time) and different reasons.
Safeway (original Houston) division failed because due to Safeway assuming lots of debt due to getting bought by KKR to "save" them from corporate raiders, and that meant a lot of divisions had to go, including the entire Southern California division (where Safeway had done quite well) to Vons. The "new" AppleTree chain in Houston failed because it had lots of debt and old stores, whereas Randalls and even Fiesta were zooming ahead with larger and nicer stores and getting attacked by newcomers Food Lion and HEB Pantry at the low-end.
Albertsons (original) division failed because Randalls and Kroger already had lots of stores, and it would've taken a big investment just to get a fraction of the market share. (That and Albertsons had a lot of bad location planning). The company had also assumed a lot of debt through buying American Stores in 1999 and decided that trying to get Houston wasn't worth the effort.
Randalls had been run into the ground by Safeway's leadership from the 1990s and a failure to effectively compete (including on price, selection, larger stores, etc.) and even after Albertsons' purchase of Randalls, the division was in bad shape (and again, struggling with debt), so it's dying on the vine.