Magnetic field strength and bldc rotor
I'm hardly a motor expert, but since no one else has jumped in here, I'm going to offer a few thoughts as more of an "extended comment" than an answer.


  Question #1. Am I dealing with eddy currents, or how could these odd
  scope waveforms be explained?


It's impossible to say, since you didn't say where these waveforms come from. How is the stator wired, and how are you driving the motor?


  Question #2. I suspect that efficiency and field strength go up with
  steel placement, but why don't the plot field strengths seem to
  reflect this?


It did &mdash; inside the steel. Were you expecting the fields in the gap between the rotor and stator to change substantially?


  Question #3. Whats the best way to understand these plots in a way
  that translates to real world physical force on the shaft?


Motor design is a complex subject, and as I said, I'm hardly an expert. The torque exerted on the rotor is a function of how much the energy of the magnetic field changes as the rotor turns. A static analysis of a single position isn't really going to tell you much.

The biggest problem I see with your design is the huge air gap between the rotor and the stator. You can see that lots of field lines are running directly between the poles of each, rather than coupling across the gap. This means that the total field energy is only mildly affected by rotor position, which makes the motor extremely inefficient.