Few days ago I had the same issue while implementing lazy controllers with promisses. When you take a look at the documentation about routeProvider there is a sample that uses $timeout service with promises (https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/src/ng/route.js#L186). $timeout implemation uses $rootScope.$apply() to call the lifecycle and refresh the bindings (AFAIK it calls all dirty check functions - it's how bindings work in Angular). So the solution to my problem (and I think also yours) was adding $rootScope.$apply() after the resolve(), like this:
setTimeout(function() {
deferred.resolve('foo');
$rootScope.$apply();
}, 2000);