Got a break in the rain and was able to pull the front shaft off tonight after work. This did take care of the excessive noise, but the more I thought about it before hand, that makes perfect sense. With no front shaft, there's zero chance of any sort of power what so ever being sent to the front wheels (regardless of automatic hubs and being in 2wd).
The front shaft is the original on my Jeep, with all original parts that have 161K on them. I know it could stand a rebuild simply as a result of age and mileage, but there's no binding in any of the u-joints at all. That being said, while I have it off now i'm going to go ahead and rebuild it.
Today is about 35-40 degrees colder than it was this weekend when I was working on it, so I took it out for a good drive to get all the fluids warmed up, and it still remained quiet. I could hear the faintest (VERY faint) clicking during sharp turns, but that's exactly what I expect from a locker.
Still bouncing e-mails back and forth with customer support at Aussie, so i'll keep this updated as I go. And I have to say, Aussie's customer service has been excellent. Currently have two different reps working together with me to try and figure all this out.