Someone did similar, saying C1 did as good a job at noise reduction as the JPEG engine, and he said "use that, then." The arrogance at Adobe is pretty stupefying.
I think I might give DXO a shot with your samples and recommendation. LR is a great unified tool, but I really should try the competition to make sure I'm using the best tool for the job.
Check out Alien Skin's Bokeh plug-in for Photoshop. Add some background blur to small sensor captures that is superior to using Adobe's blur tools. It looks more lens-like rather than across the board, or done with complex gradient layer masks.
