Trying to understand limitations of Web Edition tools

You are absolutely correct and let this be a lesson to all you kids out there that want to stay up until 4am trying to get something new to work. I took another crack at it yesterday. I started over on one of the tutorials and carefully selected what options I really wanted. I left out the Nios II/f and swapped in the 'e' version. I left out the Remote Update Controller also because I don't anticipate needing that capability.

I generated the sopc config and loaded it on my board. Success! It did not tell me that anything I had created was time limited or limited to tethering!

I do wish that the there was a way of easily identifying what components in SOPC builder would result in a limited system if they were included in a project without the subscription license... Maybe that already exists; if so, where is it? I think that points to the OP's initial question.

The Quartus and Nios software tools are just so slick that I can't give up because of frustration. I shall keep at it.