It is on such a layout (and needs to be). Anything I can do to get around that?
If I understand correctly what you're trying to do you should look into some system expressions. Check out the following example.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2306601/seteditbox.cap
It sets the editbox position when you click left using the ScrollXLeft and ScrollYTop expressions, which return the left and top visible edges of the layout. Therefore it will work correctly for nonscrolling layers.