(1) Help About in LR shows: LR Version 1.4.1 and ACR 4.4.1. However, Help About in PS (under Plug-ins) shows ACR 4.6.0.30. I believe that I remember PS doing an auto-update from Adobe to update ACR a week or two ago. Is this normal, that LR does not recognize the correct version of ACR?
LR does not use the Camera Raw plug-in. The latter is only used by Photoshop and Bridge. Thus there is no connection whatsoever between the version number displayed in the LR about box and the Camera Raw plug-in version number displayed in the PS about box for Camera Raw.
The way to think about the equivalence is raw image processing capabilities. The raw processing engine in ACR 4.6.0.30 is more recent than the raw processing engine in LR 1.4.1 (which is equivalent to the raw processing engine in the older ACR 4.4.1).
(2) Only two camera profiles show up in LR: ACR 2.2 and ACR 4.4. Is this normal, or should there be a later camera profile (but of course not the new "AS" profiles that Adobe makes clear do not work with LR 1.4.1 and earlier)?
Yes, this is normal.
(3) The ACR 2.2 and 4.4 profiles include a modest amount of sharpening and color noise reduction for the Canon 40D.
No, they don't. These profiles only affect color. It is true that Camera Raw does have some default sharpening and noise reduction settings, listed in the Detail tab. But these are completely independent settings from the profile setting.
Is it best to use these instead of the Photokit capture sharpening and Noiseware, or should I set the LR sharpening and color noise reduction to zero and do these functions using Photokit and Noiseware in PS? (Never mind the trouble of doing the trip to PS; I am only concerned with which method produces the best results.)
My recommendation is that for mild noise cases, use the Detail tab for capture sharpening within Lightroom or Camera Raw. It was designed specifically with capture sharpening in mind.
However, if you do plan to use heavy-duty noise reduction using Noiseware or a similar external tool, then I would disable capture sharpening within Lightroom (set Amount to zero in Detail) and then do noise reduction in PS followed by the capture sharpening tool of your choice (e.g., PKS).
(4) I know that LR 2.1 may resolve some of these issues. However, from what I have read my sense is to delay the upgrade to LR 2.1 until I get a faster CPU.
Yes, probably a good idea.