what is the smiley emoji between wifi and battery percentage in the right corner of my ipad.?

You appear to have configured a Custom Focus… as described here:

Use Focus on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Set up a custom Focus

If you want to concentrate on an activity that's different from any of the provided Focus options, you can create a Custom Focus.

1. Go to Settings > Focus. 
2. Tap the Add button , then tap Custom or browse additional options.
3. Enter a name for your Focus.
4. Choose a colour and an icon to represent your Focus, then tap Next.
5. Customise the options for your Focus.

It appears you named a Focus icon, which is appearing in your Status Bar:

Use Focus on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Well apparently I didn’t nail it. I have never seen an emoji icon in the status bar of an iPad. I don’t see anything in the settings that could possibly be a smiley emoji that you can turn on in the control center settings.

Which iOS version are you running?

If it looks like what you see in my screenshot, it is the Focus icon. If you want, you can turn it off by swiping down in the upper right corner to get to the control center.

Post a screen shot so we can see what you see.

You likely nailed it!

From the link I posted, it is possible to choose an emoji for a Focus status icon. So you did kind of, sort of, nail it.

I believe that LotusPilot has answered your question. You seemed to know that from the beginning because you said it was a Focus icon.