Use case: I'd like to be able to pull out my configurations so someone could recreate what I have done over time without being 'locked in' to using Rancher server to do the same thing on their own k8s distro, particular environment, etc.

I would recommend using the Rancher 2 Terraform provider - you should be able to create most Rancher resources using that and share them with others. https://registry.terraform.io/providers/rancher/rancher2/latest/docs