I now see why the errors display in different places and at different times.
The 'Client-side' errors display first, it seems; therefore, the two short text fields I have display the "Required" prior to triggering the server-side errors. These client-side errors display to the right of the field.
After the user clears these by entering some text, then the server-side errors trigger (I am just clicking submit on a blank form and working through the errors, so all should trigger for testing). These errors display on the top of the form.
I thought I could just disable client-side and then perhaps the text box errors would display up top with the rest, but to no avail.
Nonetheless, I moved the forms to different pages and all works well. Thanks, Chad.
Given that different types of forms require different types of validations, perhaps this is not doable, but having all errors either display to the right of the field or on top (or bottom in future releases) would be godsend.