Yep, works only if I set it inside of a blank scene loaded before a scene that uses 2dTK. Not sure why I can't get it to work otherwise, but I'm fine with this solution.
Only other thing I'm having trouble figuring out is using platform settings with Fonts. I have them included in my collection, but I'm not clear on what I'm supposed to do - I've tried exporting the bmfont into a "1x" folder, but when I do that I get errors telling me the atlas is too small for the sprites (not sure why since it's supposed to create a new atlas for the 1x, not put it in the same one), so I'm thinking something wonky is going on.