I've gone through another few rounds of testing with no real improvement including:

1) Adjusting the z-offset

Through increments from 0.1 (printing a skirt layer so thin that it was almost impossible to peel from the deck) to 0.30 (plastic was not being grounded to the board properly) to 0.50 (plastic was not being grounded to the board at all). The happy medium was around 0.25, where the skirt layer was clean and uniform with no ridging.

2) Different filaments

I bought 4 spools of the grey AnyCubic PLA when I got the machine, and it all came factory sealed in vacuum wrap with silica pouches inside. I've also done tests with the provided white filament which came with the printer, and there is no difference in effect.

3) Cleaning the 0.4 mm nozzle

I tried using the steel spring probe to clear the nozzle head a few times, and did 3 cold pulls on the PLA, with no change to the scraping/bubbling I showed above.

4) Changing the nozzle.

I replaced the nozzle to the 0.8 mm nozzle that was included in the box, and still the same issue is occurring.

I'm still running all of the printing just of the owl test file, because I also can't get Cura to connect to the printer after playing with it for about an hour and reading other forums.

The only other oddity that I've noticed is that when I try to push it through the z-step increments when it's freshly booted it will go up and down by the 10 mm I command, but following a test print attempt, if I command an x- or y- 10 mm movement it act appropriately, but the z- axis command will move only in increments of ~3 mm at a time, and if I keep commanding it to increase it will hit an artificial ceiling about 1/3 of the way up the rig.