Never mind. I did some digging for ideas myself, and realized SVNkit, which is the Java SVN library, is installed with Matlab and available from the Matlab through its Java interoperability. Presumably the Matlab GUI uses it for its underlying source control interaction.
Knowing that, it's pretty straightforward to just use svnkit for the functionality I seek (insofar as Java is straightforward). For example, to get a file's revision number and test if it is locally modified:
svn_client_manager = org.tmatesoft.svn.core.wc.SVNClientManager.newInstance;
status_data = svn_client.getStatusClient.doStatus(java.io.File(working_filename),false);
revision = status_data.getRevision.getNumber;
status = char(status_data.getNodeStatus);
if strcmp(status,'modified')
disp 'FILE WAS MODIFIED'
end
So, I think I'm good.