So the moral of the story is this - even if ALL your data and ALL your imagery is all in the same projection (in my case State Plane) if I want to use my imagery in the AGOL WAB basemap widget I need to republish those services using the Web Mercator projection EVEN IF I DON'T WANT TO USE ESRI BASEMAPS... that's my understanding, is that correct? Why don't I have to republish my other services then as well (the non-imagery services)? (I don't want to, I'm just trying to understand.) It used to be so simple to create these applications, this imagery thing is kind of throwing a wrench in it.
(Just so it's clear, all my data is in the same projection and I am not using caching on any service - imagery or otherwise.)