While I agree in principle that when owned one should start from scratch, my advice would be to learn something. Often I am asked to analyse attacks and I now have a collection of about 15 malware scripts that not only show me the intent but they are also useful (and remarkably well coded) for my daily admin tasks.
So, fresh start but at least get something out of it!
"and the 'sploit can be mitigated before bringing it online to the outside world"
You should read more carefully.
Also, keeping people waiting without an ETA for a down service because you're learning isn't going to result in happy customers.
Furthermore, whomever is running these boxes needs to deploy NIDS and HIDS and properly secure their boxes, because clearly they don't understand what an attack surface is.
Disagree, both in spirit and to the letter; for starters, I'm pretty sure there's still validity in a very long blog post I wrote about NIDS back in 1998:
So, fresh start but at least get something out of it!