Well, played around with it some more again, after toggling the time zone setting on and off a few times and restating the phone for a good measure it looks like I finally got it there.
Looks like when Night Shift disables based on a schedule it starts doing it even more than 1 minute ahead of the set time--I have it set to disable at 7 AM and at 6:58 AM the screen was already noticeably bluish and pretty close to normal.
i don't know about the sleeping well part, but what i love about it is that my eyes are thanking my for this everyday i have an old iMac which is SUPER bright and setting it to the lowest brightness + yellowish tint at night helps a lot. try it, use it in the dark for an hour then disable it. you'll be blinded instantly by the blue/white light.