Found my problem. UI was set to default scaling. Which causes the UI to take up more room on the screen under 4k than under 1920x1200 resolution. This setting is not on the same option page as the graphics settings, so I missed it. Also didn't make any sense to me that the automatic scaling would automatically use more UI space in this comparison. When playing with this setting, under my desktop setings (1920x1200), the UI Scaling is at 100%. Under 4k, it defaults to 300%. For me, adjusting it down manually to around 250% seems to work MUCH better.
BTW, Laptop has a GTX 960 M, so plenty of power to run at acceptable rates for this game at 4k.