Yes, that's all true. But there's more going on here than playlist management. I was finally able to get the album off the iPad but it wasn't what you would call an "intuitive" fix. First I tried to completely trash the songs from my iTune library (I backed them up on the desktop). It just sucked them back in from the iPad on the next sync. I deleted them again from iTunes and this time deselected the Sync Music box in the iPad music pane... I got the alert about wiping all the music off the device... "good'" I thought as I hit "Apply".
I seemed like it would work until I opened iPod on the pad and... there they were: the songs that wouldn't die. BUT, at least this time they were listed in the "Manually Load/Remove" window in the iPad music pane. I manually removed them, hit "apply", and voila... no more downloaded Cloud songs.
As with all things beta it was an adventure. I'm sure it will get easier in time.