@Bmosbacker, you take the cake! 
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Sometimes iCloud/Notes/etc just works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
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CloudKit seems to be durable, if you don’t overload it when you’re uploading to it. Be a little more patient and wait for the sync to finish. Haven’t had too many problems with Keep It this time around.
iCloud Drive, on the other hand: run away and don’t ever look back.
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I am quite interested in the engineer’s response, I’d bet that Apple did not do anything to fix your issue and what was wrong on your laptop that made it unable to upload changes to iCloud got solved by itself.
Congrats on it being synced. I wonder if the engineers did anything in particular or if iCloud cleaned itself up somehow.
So it took about 4 weeks to conclude this saga!
I don’t recall ever having a problem with Drafts or Reminders, etc. syncing, but I “ran away” from iCloud Drive long ago. Apple makes great hardware but I don’t keep any data on their network services, other than messages and receipts I receive from Apple in my @iCloud.com account.
If you are interested there is a long discussion about “why Overcast isn’t moving to CloudKit after all.” on ATP podcast episode 516.
I hate to ask a stupid question but is Apple Notes syncing via CloudKit or iCloud Drive?
No, it was not my laptop. We tried creating notes in iCloud.com and had the same results. I think the problem was on Apple’s side. Besides, I’d performed a nuke and pave and reinstalled Ventura fresh and the problems persisted.
Four weeks and a lot of wasted time. 
Ahh that was a blast from the past! Maybe 5-7 years ago I had an issue for months where my bookmarks weren’t syncing across devices. It was frustrating, and it got escalated when I put in a ticket because the “have you tried turning your devices off” advice didn’t help. In the end it turned out this file had duplicated itself at some point on my Mac. It was one of those errors where it was immediately obvious what the problem was, once someone looked in the right place.
IF I understood Marco Arment on ATP 512, Notes and reminders, etc. use cloudkit for syncing. And cloudkit requires an iCloud account and iCloud Drive to be enabled.
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I keep rereading the edited subject of this thread as John 16:23, which is oddly appropriate/inappropriate.
In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
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That’s hilarious. 
Perhaps I should make a direct appeal to Tim Cook or whoever is in charge of CloudKit and iCloud Drive. 
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Not to derail, but my challenge is not about not syncing. I want to restore a bookmarks.plist file from a TM backup. But, because iCloud is turned on, my older (and correct) file is overwritten.
Does anyone know how to completely clean-out/reset the iCloud version of any of the sync-able items (bookmarks, Notes, Reminders, etc.)? If I could do that, I could more easily restore a local backup of a good version.
Hopefully someone else can answer your iCloud reset question, but I’m offering a lateral alternative. Why don’t you duplicate the correct plist so that it has a date that post-dates the iCloud version. Wouldn’t that mean that iCloud wouldn’t overwrite it because it’s the newer version?
Certainly with my own issue, once iCloud knew which plist file to read (after the duplicate was deleted), it updated itself.
[Obviously delete the older version from your Mac so you don’t break your sync like happened with me…]
Mailmate does all this, I have “bundles” part of the beta builds but rock solid, which sends either the email title + link or the email + text (as a note) + link to Omnifocus or Devonthink or Things or calendar apps etc etc. Its absolutely frictionless and can be assigned hotkeys.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I’ve looked at MailMate but 1) I don’t want to use different apps on different devices. Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t believe MailMate has a mobile app. and 2) I am fine with Apple Mail—I actually like the app. 
I’m glad it’s working for you again @Bmosbacker, that’s great news. Not knowing the hows or whys is a little scary, but I’m glad you got your stuff back.
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You have the option of deleting iCloud data from all devices in Settings, iCloud, Manage Account Storage. I’ve never used this to correct a problem and the language isn’t consistent from app to app
Have you tried creating a new user on your Mac and restoring the file to that account? If successful you would at least have the possibility of then exporting the data.
The “from all devices” looks promising. I’ll check that out (if there is a next time). Thank you.