of course now my dials are not where they were and as I've been noodling for over an hour I can't quite get the sound back to where it was
You're describing what happens with any/most existing synths with preset save/recall. Each time you load a preset, the patch will sound exactly like it was saved and because of that, what's visually represented by the physical knob/fader positions will be "un-synced" with the recalled internal "positions" (voltage values) i.e. most likely on the "wrong" positions for the sound you're hearing.
That's why, when you tweak a control, that parameter value will "jump" (depends on the control mode: hard jump, relative jump, catch-up, etc) from the internal value to the value physically imposed by that tweaked knob.
I don't know if Arturia plans to do a soft-editor companion app or a VST "bridge" to the MatrixBrute, but if they do, I guess that's one way for you to see a (virtual) visual representation of where the physical control positions were supposed to be for whatever loaded patch.
I guess this "panel un-syncing" is an accepted fact on all electronic instruments with patch save/recall.
To have a "what you hear is what you see on the panel" would need either motorized knobs and faders, a touchscreen based panel (like the iPad) or using endless rotaries with LED rings to show their position, which funny enough, MatrixBrute uses on the MOD rotary, I think
Something that could help to mitigate this would be to have all the movable controls touch-sensitive and a display (almost like BeatStepPRO), showing its internal value, helping to physically move (if that's really important to you) the control to that value/position.
If all the above has nothing to do with your question, sorry... I did my best to help
