No tracks / clips are locked, I have 3 tracks selected for viewing.
Even if I close staff view completely, and re-establish a view with just 1 track, this project still will not turn of Staff View edit buttons.
So now I'm thinking this is not a general Sonar X2a bug, but somehow this project has caught a Staff View bug.
This project is not an old project I've re-opened, it was started recently in X2.