by Ray Morris.
Thanks so much for the help. If anyone else having similar trouble comes across this post, here is a working example of local plugin backup and restore:
https://github.com/MorrisR2/moodle_local_enemyquestions/tree/master/backup/moodle2
Where I used $pluginwrapper->set_source_sql, many plugins will use the simpler $pluginwrapper->set_source_table.