If anyone cares, my weird audio & app pausing thing appears to have been related to the lightning Ear Pods. My issue could be fixed temporarily by unplugging and replugging them in. Issue never occurred when the Ear Pods were unplugged. Apple Support wanted me to do a factory reset
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. Wasn't prepared to do that, but tried doing a "Reset All Settings" (vs "Erase All Content and Settings") and affter about a week, that seems to have fixed it...
Was this related to iOS 14.6? I have no idea...
tl;dr - if you are having weird audio pausing and app pausing issues, maybe "Reset All Settings" can help...