And THAT is the problem

I was thinking that the combination of the hypervisor and the guest kernel in total formed the microkernel. Each guest has its own personality and file systems, network, ipc, etc. Information is passed back and forth through the hypervisor using interfaces that happen to look a lot like network cards and block devices, or use PV drivers which can do pure message passing. The big thing is that every bit runs in its own protected memory space which I thought was the big difference and value of a microkernel vs. a traditional kernel.

Like you said, I'm certainly standing from afar and squinting more than a little. 8-)