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I ran out of time on the last 3 or 4 questions on the first 2 sections (but still managed to get them bubbled in), then really got screwed on the 3rd section as far as time goes. My timing just wasn't there today. I had my test prep derailed the last 30 days by family issues, but still felt I had a good enough grasp on the material to go ahead and take it. And I was wrong. FWIW I was PTing upper 160s in early May before all this crap happened, so I feel confident heading into October. My reasoning was that it was better to cancel instead of go with what was sure to be a sub-par score, which I would have retaken anyway. Would I have been better off just not showing up? Or is a cancellation not really that bad when it comes to admissions?

It sounds like you did the right thing, and the cancel won't hurt you. And now you don't have to stress about what your score might be. Plus you might have re-taken in October anyway.

Was my reasoning that the cancelled score will look better to adcoms than an unusually low score the proper line to take? Or should I have just taken an absence? (Which I thought about this morning)

Ideally, you could have cancelled at midnight and it wouldn't have counted as anything. But absent that, you made the right call. Good luck in Oct!