oh what the heck, was it that easy??? Turning the jquery visual transitions into angular? just making ng-show activate on the condition ng-disabled is also true? Geez. Angular is powerful.
whoops, spoke too soon. Had to adjust the css because display:none isn't necessary for ngshow/hide. However, the positioning isn't really where I like it...it's at the bottom when we originally envisioned it to be in the center
finagled with negative margins and font sizing and we are back in business. I was concerned about 'assigning' the opacity styling to the buttons via angular, but I realized, the buttons' disabled state behaves as a good visual indicator and backdrop anyways. I think it looks fine as is, at this state.