well, I was able to get it working but it was a friggin slugfest.  I'm a programmer in my day job and I have to wonder whether Waves tested this thing on a variety of platforms and configurations.
 
There were two things going on:
a. As someone mentioned in the thread, sonar was still wanting version 9.3 waves even though the new 9.6 was installed by Waves Central.  HOWEVER, simply removing the 9.3 dll wasn't enough to solve this.  I went into the registry, and searched for any 9.3 entries and found a number of them.  Once I deleted them, then Sonar stopped asking for the "9.3" directory.  However, my plugins where still MIA.
 
b. Waves Central does not prompt or allow you to declare where the VST's go! So, it had stuck the 9.6 dll in C:\Program Files (x86)\VSTPlugIns. I had no idea it had done this until I did some detective work.  So I added that path to Sonar's VST list and everything started working.  NOTE: I have a multi drive custom system with an SSD on the C drive, so I have my vst's on the d drive.

All waves central would need to have done is ask where I wanted to install the goods. Why was that left out?
 
C'mon Waves, don't waste our time with sloppy programming and testing like this.  There is no excuse for a failure of a piece of self contained software that is so vital to the workings of the plugs in. No excuse at all. Get on the stick. Do better.