I'll just leave this note here for now: It appears that the server's build process overwrites the file /home/jovyan/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py even when it's a custom image build. The build log doesn't show this detail, but the evidence can be seen when you inspect the lab interactively. (Some of the details in the config file may be inaccurate too; see #10.)
If a file overwrite like this is necessary for compatibility on the site, it would still be useful if the specifications for lab developers could detail all the files the build will overwrite.