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You're right .... they could have eventually mobilized some more legions and tried again. Why didn't they, except for some revenge expeditions by Tiberius and Germanicus? Probably because they weren't worth it. The Germans were less developed economically and culturally than the Celts, and arguably more dangerous. This made the economics of conquest very unprofitable. The Germans were at an agricultural level barely above scratching the soil with a stick, and the further the Romans pentrated into Germanic territory, the less likely it was the legions could live off any conquered settements. It made more sense in the long run to simply fortify the borders and deal with the bands of raiders that managed to penetrate. Because the Germans were not in any sense united, they fought amongst each other more than against the Romans (within ten years of the Varus disaster, Arminius was assassinated by his own people and the German tribes were reverting to civil war). Augustus could never have foreseen that 300 years later these groups would have amalgamated into supertribes thanks to the Hunnish migration.