Greetings @kdubious,
Glad to hear you’re having a good experience with Torizon.
As for your issue, it is possible to run Network Manager inside a container. See the on this post here: Change the apalis imx6 static IP address from inside a container
Give this a try and let me know how it works out. As for the other things on your list let us know if you have any questions or issues with those as well when you get to them.
Best Regards,
Jeremias