Hey there drew_bridge,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We’re not understanding you’re having issues with an alert related to a download appearing. You’ve done some great steps so far and we’ll be happy to help with this.
Have you updated to iOS 15 or iOS 14.8 yet? If not, back up and do that to see if this has any impact on the issue:
Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
If you go into your App Library, do you see any apps in Recently Added that are downloading or look to be waiting? Have you checked TV and Music to see if anything there is downloading? You can check the library in each app for info on this.
Take care.